Beverly Martin, executive director of the Mississippi Association of Casino Operators and a member of the Harrison County Visitors Bureau, which covers Biloxi, Gulfport, Bay St. Louis and Waveland, said 2007 was a banner year due to a shift in customer demographics, primarily a surge in recovery workers, primarily construction, volunteers and government agencies, and increased tourists from Florida and other points in the East.

The quick rebuilding of the casinos – almost all financed by operator capital, debt and insurance and not public subsidies – saw revenues along the coastal area of the state hit the $100 million-per-month record for all of 2007, a highpoint hit only once in 2006 as rebuilding was wrapping up.

Mississippi Gulf Coast casinos saw revenues of $1.3 billion in 2007, compared to $1.2 billion in 2004, the last full year before Katrina. The storm blew down revenue to $886,158 in 2005 when there was zero revenue for four months.

While the inland casinos along riverbanks hardly bore the brunt of Katrina, the speed of recovery of the coastal market has stunned pundits. For example, June 2005 revenue was $107.5 million, while last June revenue was $124.7 million, according to the Mississippi State Tax Commission.

Capping the recovery was the July 7 opening of the 381 room Hard Rock Casino & Resort Biloxi. It's the second time the hotel has been built. The $90 million dockside-barge casino and 381-room shore hotel was built and set its grand opening for Aug. 27, 2005. Karl Bulot, Hard Rock Biloxi's senior vice president of operations, oversaw the construction of the Hard Rock. "We were about to open 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina landed. No one had used the facilities other than a press event. I locked the doors that Monday (Aug. 29) at 11 a.m. and Tuesday morning it was gone,'' Bulot said.

The casino barge was wiped out, and 70% of the Hard Rock's land based hotel and amenities were destroyed. Due to costs for material and labor "that went through the roof,'' the rebuilding cost $90 million, even though the base of the footprint of the hotel was intact, Bulot said. And insurance is running five times the pre-Katrina premiums. While the increased gambling revenue and construction along the Gulf Coast has been a boon, it's the only economic activity in the area, Bulot and others point out.

Unlike other coastal areas relying on federal and state subsidies to help rebuild, the Mississippi casinos only break was to be allowed to move the gambling sites inland along an 800-foot swath of where their dock-side casinos were located. When legalized in 1990, casinos had to be on barges, often resembling riverboats, with hotels and other amenities built on shore.

Due to insurance premiums rising 300% to 500% for both commercial and residential properties, the barriers for returning small ancillary tourism businesses and the residential sector looks bleak. The small tourism-related businesses that rounded out the resort atmosphere of the coast are simply not rebuilding.

Bulot says it will take 15 years for the Biloxi resort area to return to its former self. And that's fueling gambling revenue. "There's simply no other amenities for social gathering places. There's nothing else for people to do'' but to find their entertainment at the casinos. "The fun arcades, the restaurants, everything is gone….and the individual mom-and-pop operations can't rebuild'' like the casinos.

The Beau Revage Resort & Casino, a wholly owned subsidiary of MGM Mirage, is an example at the speed in which operators moved to reopen. Originally built in 1999 at 32-stories, the 3.2-million sf property has 1,740 rooms and nearly 80,000 sf of gambling space, With 3,800 employees, the property, costing $800 million to originally build and $550 million in repairs and renovations after the hurricane, opened Aug. 29, 2006, one year to the day of Katrina's landfall.

Another market has also cropped up, much like in New Orleans following Katrina: disaster tourism. Florida residents have been flooding the Mississippi casinos, Bulot said. "These people in Florida have lived through hurricanes and identify with what happened. They come to visit, see what is happening in the recovery, much as in New Orleans 9th Ward,'' said Bulot. The New Orleans suburb of Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish, where the entire coastal parish was inundated with 15-to 20 feet of water.