Since its founding in 1974, meetNKY — previously known as the Northern Kentucky Convention & Visitors Bureau — has been heavily involved in marketing the region’s quirks and characteristics to the rest of the world. A key component of marketing is storytelling.
“One of the core roles of our organization is to be the chief storytellers of the region. To help people take a closer look at Northern Kentucky,” meetNKY CEO Julie Kirkpatrick said at the organization’s 50th anniversary celebration at Drees Pavilion Thursday night in Devou Park.
As summer approaches, Kirkpatrick reflected on the organization’s impact over the past 50 years, touted the region’s tourism-related successes of 2023, and looked ahead to its initiatives in 2024 and beyond.
The founding mission of meetNKY was to increase tourism and hotel occupancy rates in Northern Kentucky, Covington Mayor Joe Meyer recounted during the forum. One of the organization’s first projects was Mainstrasse Village.
“In the 1970s, the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau came up with the idea of a tourist service commercial zone — the creation of a German village to try to attract bus tourists and other tourists from outside the region into our part of the state,” Meyer said. “Hence was born, Mainstrasse Village. That was opened in 1979.”
While 2023 featured a variety of events that drove tourism throughout the Greater Cincinnati region, none were more impactful than Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour – held on June 30 and July 1 at Paycor Stadium. Her concert was estimated to have a $92 million impact on the region, according to a report published by the Cincinnati Regional Chamber’s Center for Research and Data and Visit Cincy.
Arguably, the most challenging time in the organization’s history was during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic specifically impacted the U.S. tourism industry as government-mandated quarantines and shutdowns stunted people’s ability to travel freely. Businesses like airlines, restaurants, hotels and retailers were directly impacted by government restrictions.
Since 2020, Northern Kentucky’s tourism industry has steadily rebounded. During the forum, Kirkpatrick shared that Northern Kentucky’s hotel occupancy rates rose by 1.3% to 68.5% in 2023. Moreover, hotel revenue per available room grew by 7.4% year over year to $82.80 — both statistics Kirkpatrick said demonstrate the industry’s recovery post-pandemic.
meetNKY’s internal projections earmarked 2025 as the year that regional hotel demand would return to 2019 levels.
“The Northern Kentucky hotel community has fully recovered demand from the pandemic,” Kirkpatrick said.
Another statistic Kirkpatrick highlighted was the volume of earned media mentions of Northern Kentucky. Over the past year, 675 earned stories in national and international outlets mentioned the region or local attractions. These stories generated approximately $19.6 million in saved advertorial spending and reached more than 1 billion readers, she said.
“We had articles in the London Times, The Toronto Sun, the Daily Mirror showcasing why this region is the premier travel destination right now,” she said.
Regarding the Northern Kentucky Convention Center, Kirkpatrick said the venue has generated 37,000 room nights for surrounding hotels that could lead to a potential $21 million economic impact. Room nights are a metric used by the hospitality industry that comprises the total number of rooms a planner commits to occupy at the hotel in exchange for a specific contracted rate.
One of the most significant events hosted by the Northern Kentucky Convention Center last year was the Kona Ice Annual Konvention. The annual event attracted 1,500 attendees and led to an almost $1 million impact on the region, according to Kirkpatrick.
Looking forward, meetNKY is considering plans to overhaul the Northern Kentucky Convention Center. In January, the organization unveiled a preliminary study that found the venue was ripe for potential renovations. Since opening in 1999, the venue has yet to undergo any significant renovations outside of turning the ballroom into an amphitheater.
Kirkpatrick also mentioned another study that found Northern Kentucky could support the development of a multimillion-dollar youth sports complex. The study compared the economic impact of an indoor facility versus an outdoor facility – both of which could have an annual economic impact of over $20 million.
“We do not get our fair share of amateur sports visitors from this commonwealth and Northern Kentucky deserves a world-class sports facility and it will also be an amazing asset for everyone that lives here,” she said.
Guy van Rooyen, president of the meetNKY board of directors and head of the Salyers Group — the commercial real estate firm behind Hotel Covington — told the audience the organization’s recent successes were due to setting clear goals and investing in data for future planning.
“The last four years have been transformative for the organization, as it works closely on marketing the Cincinnati region and we have overhauled significantly how we operate to be more nimble and leaner to deliver a much larger impact with fewer goals,” van Rooyen said.
