Grand Strand leaders tout new SC development, business & tourism enterprise

A slew of Grand Strand business, tourism and development organizations — including the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce (MBACC) — are uniting under a new enterprise called The Greater Myrtle Beach Collaborative in a move leaders say will reduce expenses, eliminate overlapping work and address resident concerns not currently met.

“What changes is not the mission, it’s really the alignment,” said GMBC CEO Matt Pivarnik. “This model allows us to operate more strategically, leveraging shared services, shared resources and economies of scale to deliver greater impact across all areas.”

Well-known entities including the Chamber of Commerce, Visit Myrtle Beach and Partnership Grand Strand joined the new initiative, as well as smaller organizations including Collaborate 2031, Leadership Grand Strand and Grand Strand Young Professionals. Although each organization will remain a separate entity, they’ll all serve under a single platform.

The separate organizations will maintain their own boards, but the Greater Myrtle Beach Collaborative also has its own board of directors staffed with leaders from the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, Visit Myrtle Beach and Partnership Grand Strand.

Officials say the restructuring is in line with national trends combining tourism, economic development and business advocacy, which have found success in places such as Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

Aligning work and cutting costs

The Myrtle Beach Collaborative could ease funding competition among its participating organizations, but officials say the new structure will cut major costs by combining members’ finances on marketing communication, human resources and office space.

“I think it’s an opportunity to streamline funding, but it really is an opportunity to streamline expenses,” Pivarnik said.

Beyond freeing up finances by eliminating redundancies, member organizations say the new enterprise reduces overlapping initiatives.

Listening to residents

Outside the business community and tourist economy, the Greater Myrtle Beach Collaborative promises to reflect residents’ needs on issues such as beach renourishment, natural gas, sales taxes and the Horry County RIDE program in new ways. The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, in particular, is poised to advocate for resident issues.

“It’s definitely going to make our work more efficient. I think it allows us to spend time really doing deep dives into legislative advocacy … Under our previous structure, we were trying to split our time between focusing on legislative advocacy and the needs of the business community, along with hospitality and how hotels and restaurants were performing,” Chamber President Jimmy Gray said. “This allows us to focus the specialties of our volunteer leaders around core functions like that as opposed to splitting our time between those needs as well as the tourism needs.”

Residents around the Grand Strand area can share their feedback with the Greater Myrtle Beach Collaborative through a survey available on the Collaborate 2031 website.

This story was originally published April 16, 2026 at 7:35 PM.