Alabama Tourism Director

Alabama Tourism Director Lee Sentell has been involved in tourism promotion for 30 years. He was Decatur’s first tourism director in 1981. He was director of marketing at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville during the first 10 years of Space Camp, and was Huntsville tourism director for more than a decade.

The native of Ashland, Ala., was appointed to the Cabinet-level position of director of the Alabama Tourism Department in 2003.

Gov. Robert Bentley, who is a strong advocate for the tourism industry, reappointed him to a third term in 2011.

The agency has received numerous national marketing awards, most notably for its “year of” campaigns in partnership with local tourism organizations, that focused on food, music, the arts, history and small towns.

Sentell serves on the boards of a variety of organizations, including the Alabama Historical Commission, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Alabama Humanities Foundation, and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. He is past chair of Travel South USA, the nation’s oldest regional tourism marketing association, based in Atlanta. He was inducted into the Alabama Tourism Hall of Fame in 2000. A communications graduate of Auburn University, he was a reporter at The Decatur Daily and authored a guidebook, “The Best of Alabama,” in 1993.