Edmiston given Advocacy Award

ALEXANDRIA — Kyle Edmiston, President/CEO of Visit Lake Charles was recently honored with the Marion “Butch” Fox Advocacy Award by the Louisiana Travel Association. This award is presented to a member of LTA who goes above and beyond to advocate for the LA tourism industry.

Throughout Edmiston’s career in tourism, he has worked in legislative realms and advocated for the hospitality industry. When the wall of challenges started closing in on the tourism sector in the spring of 2020 with the pandemic, Kyle took action and used his depth of legislative experience to solve problems.

Even with the cavalcade of natural disasters that rocked Southwest Louisiana in the fall of 2020 along with the Visit Lake Charles’ headquarters being uninhabitable, Kyle never lost sight of the future of the tourism industry. He pushed forward to champion the need for supplemental funding and the diversification of funding streams to ensure that communities throughout Louisiana could rise to meet difficulties in a variety of ways to achieve optimum levels of success for the hospitality community as a whole.

Leading up to the summer legislative session of 2021, Edmiston chaired the LACVB Tourism Recovery Improvement District Task Force and played a vital role in the passage of HB 415 by Representative Gaines including testifying at the House Committee on Local, Municipal and Parochial. The passage of the TRID legislation will allow tourism boards and tourism commissions to better structure their revenue streams with the assistance of the businesses that are impacted by tourism in their respective parishes.

In addition, with Jill Kidder of LTA and Walt Leger of New Orleans and Company, Edmiston assisted with the passage of ACT 410 and the creation of the Louisiana Tourism Revival Program that dedicates $60 million of American Rescue Plan funds directly to CVBs and DMOs that had been negatively impacted by COVID-19.

At the federal level, Edmiston worked closely with U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy to ensure the tourism industry was represented and compensated for considerable losses in both the CARES Act funding and ARP Act.

Archinard named to state board

BATON ROUGE — Christopher D. Archinard of Lake Charles has been appointed to the Louisiana Sickle Cell Commission by Gov. John Bel Edwards.

The commission’s mission is to improve the delivery of sickle cell services to affected people in all parishes of Louisiana by promulgating guidelines for uniformity in the delivery of services, submitting budget recommendations to the legislature and governor, and preparing and publishing an annual report on sickle cell treatment and services in the State of Louisiana.

Archinard is the executive director of Southwest Louisiana Sickle Cell Anemia, Inc. He will serve as a representative from Southwest Louisiana Sickle Cell Anemia, Inc.

Trio joins EXIT Realty

SULPHUR — EXIT Realty Southern is pleased to announce that Morgan Hunter, Katy Edgerton and Megan Pego have joined its growing team of dedicated real estate sales professionals.

EXIT Realty Southern, located at 2730 Maplewood Drive, Sulphur, Louisiana is a proud member of EXIT Realty of Louisiana’s rapidly expanding network of independently owned and operated brokerages across the region.

Ardoin joins LC Memorial Health

Lake Charles Memorial Health System welcomes Michael Ardoin, MHA, MT (ASCP) to the leadership team as the new assistant administrator.

Born and raised in Southwest Louisiana, the Sulphur native graduated from McNeese State University with a Bachelor of Science in clinical laboratory science. Working in the laboratory as a generalist, departmental supervisor, and as a director, Ardoin’s passion for leadership and improving his community’s health care inspired him to further his education.

While remaining an American Society of Clinical Pathologists and LSBME-certified clinical laboratory scientist, he also achieved his master’s degree in healthcare administration from LSU Shreveport. He is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives.

The experience and skillset he brings to the team will play a key role in the continued growth of Lake Charles Memorial Health System and service to the community.

BBB announces officers, directors

The board of directors of Better Business Bureau Serving Southwest Louisiana has a new slate of officers for 2022.

Jennifer Istre of Iberia Bank will serve as chairperson, Allen Jarvis of Knight Media as vice president, Cheyenne Boudreaux of Mission Flares and Combustion as treasurer and Stacey Corbello of Terrell & Associates as secretary.

Ben Stine of McElveen Insurance served as chairperson during 2021 and will now serve as ex officio this year.

The following individuals will serve as board members at-large: Ryan Abell of Abell & Sons, Kay Fox of Beauregard Electric, Adam Guinn of Port Aggregates, Darrel Metoyer of Boyd Gaming, Robert Soileau of J&J Exterminating, Wendy Stine of Stine Lumber, Joe Weber of Navarre Auto Group, Matthew Welsh of West Calcasieu Cameron Hospital, and Jason Williams of Pat Williams Construction.

Visit Lake Charles recognized

Visit Lake Charles was recently honored with the Tourism/Campaign Promotion of the Year by the Louisiana Travel Association.

In the fall of 2019, Visit Lake Charles rebranded the destination as extensive research revealed that Visit Lake Charles’ brand needed to include more dynamic experiences, cultural diversity and rich food traditions along with its strong lead of gaming resorts and the great outdoors.

With this data in hand, it was time to claim the destination’s position as Louisiana’s premier resort destination by developing a new identity, channeling the real feelings, flavors and memories of past visitors, locals, and industry partners.

The new brand was in the marketplace only 10-weeks when COVID-19 shut down travel. Mother Nature layered on with blow after devastating blow leaving Louisiana’s Playground “under construction” for 2020 and early 2021. In April 2021, the Visit Lake Charles —Louisiana’s Playground campaign finally relaunched.

Media metrics revealed that the campaign produced, 31 million impressions, 63,000 landing page views, 14,000 engaged visitors, and a 22.13 percent engagement rate. Organic website traffic to Visit Lake Charles increased 23 percent since the relaunch with confirmed visitation (measured by devices in-market) from all 50 states. Occupancy increased 39 percent year-over-year to 70.4 percent; demand increased 8 percent, and revenue increased 35 percent.

Rebuilding SWLA Partner of Year

The Rebuilding SWLA Community Coalition was recently named as the Community Partner of the Year Award winner by the Louisiana Travel Association. Members of the coalition were communications teams for Visit Lake Charles, city of Lake Charles, Community Foundation, Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, city of Sulphur, Cameron Parish, United Way of Southwest Louisiana, and the Southwest Louisiana Economic Development Alliance.

Following Hurricane Laura in the fall of 2020, the city of Lake Charles worked alongside Visit Lake Charles, the Community Foundation of Southwest Louisiana, and the United Way of Southwest Louisiana to meet the needs of Southwest Louisiana’s residents and businesses.

Mayor Nic Hunter and Kyle Edmiston, president/CEO of Visit Lake Charles, formalized the partnership with the inclusion Southwest Louisiana Economic Development Alliance, Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, City of Sulphur and Cameron Parish to #RebuildSWLA. From there, Angie Manning, VP of Communications, coordinated with other members of the coalition to formulate a communications strategy and RebuildingSWLA.org website.

In November of 2020, Visit Lake Charles formally launched a CommUNITY of Resilience initiative to share a message of unity and resilience with local stakeholders and potential visitors. A CommUNITY video was created for VisitLakeCharles.org and distributed via social media on Facebook and YouTube, and via press release to amplify the spirit of the people and rebuilding of Southwest Louisiana. Visit Lake Charles also encouraged donations for relief efforts locally through community partners United Way of Southwest Louisiana and Community Foundation of Southwest Louisiana.

The coalition created content for resiliency stories to be featured on the Rebuilding SWLA platforms, curating fresh content from community partners and building the fanbase for the Facebook page. Each entity has administrative rights on the Facebook page, and the communications teams are working together to generate new ideas and effective ways to reach the public and visiting public regarding progress being made as well as humanitarian efforts underway in the region.

In the spring of 2021, the Community Foundation of Southwest Louisiana worked with a local agency and members of the Rebuilding SWLA Community Coalition to produce a Community Hope video “Shout It from the Rooftops” The video has reached more than 150,000 people and tallied more than 54,000 views.

On July 27, 2021, exactly one month prior to the anniversary of Hurricane Laura, Mayor Hunter spearheaded a Help SWLA Now campaign.

Christus Ochsner welcomes team

In its ongoing effort to expand specialty services in the region, Ochsner Christus Health Cente-St. Patrick, 401 Dr. Michael Debakey Drive, welcomes a new group practice in gastroenterology, which focuses on the digestive system. In addition to accessing expertise in a critical field of healthcare, patients benefit from Ochsner’s EPIC electronic medical record system, which provides seamless care between Ochsner providers.

The group providers are:

Ricardo Michael McCall, M.D., is a Lake Charles native who has practiced in the area for more than 20 years. McCall earned a medical degree from LSU Medical Center-Shreveport and completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Texas at Houston. He completed a fellowship in gastroenterology at Ochsner Medical Foundation in New Orleans. He is a member of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, Louisiana State Medical Society and Calcasieu Parish Medical Society.

Nisha Babu Patel, M.D., earned a medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.  Patel completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and a fellowship in gastroenterology at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.

Madalyn Chaumont, N.P., specializes in gastroenterology with prior experience in family medicine. She earned her nursing degree from McNeese State University and a master’s degree in nursing from Herzing University in New Orleans. Chaumont is a member of the Louisiana Association of Nurse Practitioners, the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and American Nurses Association.