2023 meetNKY Business and Marketing Plan

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2022 was another year of recovery and growth for the tourism industry in Northern Kentucky.

The year started with a new COVID-19 variant and anxiety about continued recovery. Even through the uncertainty, the industry has experienced strong results in the past year. The year began slower than anticipated with total demand off 7% from 2019. However, the benchmark of recovery, Northern Kentucky hotel RevPAR (revenue per available room), will exceed the 2019 results. The recovery is driven by higher hotel rates than ever in the market, an indicator of the ongoing inflationary pressure.

Convention execution at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center and full-service hotels was better in 2022 than anticipated and leisure demand into the region continued to be strong especially during the summertime as the Cincinnati Music Festival returned the last weekend in July, and the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum once again hosted the 40 Days and 40 Nights of Music. There is still a mid-week business travel delta in the region, however the recovery was much better than what we saw in 2021. We will still be looking for recovery in this segment in 2023.

The Cincy Region partnership continues to be strong and successful. We have fully integrated the convention, group sales and international sales segments under a “one destination, many options” mentality. We did work collaboratively with Visit Cincy to launch a new regional website that generated more than seven million sessions this year and hosted close to 3.6 million new visitors to the site. These results are a 70% increase over the regional traffic generated by the former Regional Tourism Network strategy and a validation of the successful partnership utilizing a streamlined model.

Growth

The entire meetNKY organization has seen tremendous growth this year, as has Northern Kentucky. We celebrated major success with national media coverage of our unique and

growing Bourbon scene, as well as our claim to the start of the South including an end of the year designation from Conde Nast as a Best Place to Visit in 2023. We hosted unique events including the first John G. Carlisle Bottled in Bond Celebration in March, launched a premier spirit education event, the Norse Spirit Society in partnership with Northern Kentucky University and New Riff Distilling, and hosted not only the entire Kentucky Senate Leadership retreat in Northern Kentucky, but also the entire Kentucky Distillers Association and of course BLINK in October.

Finally, meetNKY issued the destination’s first “Tourism Master Plan” in 2022, a road map to drive strong visitor demand in Northern Kentucky. The addition of a new Product Development Director will shepherd this vision to reality and ensure the industry’s needs continue to be a focus in the destination. We celebrated the regional victory of securing new international service from British Airway to London, the opening of a reimagined Turfway Park, and a score of new restaurants, bars and experiences throughout the region. meetNKY and Northern Kentucky are looking forward to another successful year in 2023.

THE 2023 PLAN

We are anticipating a 10.6% increase in revenues in 2023 and will also see a 3% increase in supply as the Hilton Garden Inn in Florence, North by Hotel Covington, and the Homewood Suites in Newport all open.

We plan on establishing Northern Kentucky and the entire Cincy Region as an international destination of choice especially for travelers from the United Kingdom, France, Eastern Canada, and Germany as well as domestic destinations leveraging our unique collision of culture in the region. We will continue to focus on the escorted group tour market to increase length of stay during the midweek in the region. Conventions will continue to recover, and we anticipate the convention execution to achieve 87% of the 2019 records and will continue our strong trend of service excellence. We will continue efforts to bring journalists to NKY to showcase our special destination, where the North and South connect.

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Via the Kentucky State Legislature, the tourism industry is receiving a once in a lifetime allocation of the American Recovery Plan Act funds the Commonwealth received. NKY will be receiving $4.5 million in funding for promoting and marketing the destination that must be fully utilized by 2024 and an additional $5 million in funding for convention, meeting and sport event recovery that will be utilized through 2026.

The organization is also kicking off plans to enhance and grow the industry through execution of a product development strategy. We will receive a final report from consultants on the future of the Northern Kentucky Convention Center, issue and receive a final report on potential sports facility development in Northern Kentucky and work in partnership with local arts organizations to implement a public art enhancement plan and with Southbank Partners on a riverfront way-finding strategy.

Events and Conventions

While not on par with the record year in 2019, conventions and events are beginning to show recovery at the NKYCC as well as at local sporting fields and full-service event facilities. The convention & event window shrunk during COVID, demonstrated by the sales team booking 19 events in the year for the year, vs 4 events pre-COVID. We see no change in this trend and anticipate booking 20 in 2023, especially by leveraging ARPA recovery funds as incentives.

We are forecasting to be at 87% of the economic impact of 2019 at the end of 2023. We will continue to showcase the meeting and event industry as a regional effort at trade shows as part of The Cincy Region, and utilize a lead generation company to provide room night opportunities for the region. We will begin to leverage the ARPA funding to secure larger sport events for our regional facilities and continue our strong partnership with Answers in Genesis to support events at the facilities at the Ark Encounter as well as the Creation Museum. We are operating the convention team with 2 FTEs vs the 4 FTEs pre-COVID and will potentially add an additional sales manager as

the year progresses to ensure the team hits their scorecard goal of generating 150 leads with a $42 million economic impact to partners. The service execution of events in the region remains strong with a more than 90% meeting planner satisfaction and a strong intent to return. We will also expand the hotel kiosk program into more hotels in 2023 to ensure we are supporting our partners with great destination information for visitors, as well as produce a Regional Visitors Guide with our Visit Cincy partners.

Convention Center

Leisure Sales - Domestic & International

Northern Kentucky continues to see strong demand for domestic leisure visitation into the market. Through our Cincy Region partnership we have built a strong escorted group tour plan that will generate well beyond the 30,000 room nights we have tracked. We will continue to expand this market with the creation of the first regional group tour guide to increase visitation, as well as an enhanced Cincy Region presence at all group tour shows throughout the year.

Looking Forward

We are growing our effort in the leisure marketplace by showcasing the Cincy Region collaboration at several consumer travel shows in 2023. We are planning to add a domestic leisure sales manager in 2023. We continue to see strong leisure demand from Louisville, Lexington, Columbus, Indianapolis, and other drive markets driven by the Ark Encounter, sports teams and events such as the Cincinnati Music Festival, Oktoberfest, and BLINK. We will continue to focus on the drive markets as part of the leisure marketing plan but will lengthen our reach in 2023 to focus on aspirational “fly” markets like Dallas, Austin, Raleigh-Durham, and Minneapolis as part of the RTA media plan. While we are not hosting BLINK in 2023, there is a local organizing committee focused on creating a unique region event, River Roots, that would occur on the odd years (as BLINK is hosted in even years). River Roots will potentially host a smaller version of the kickoff event in 2023, with plans for a full event hosted in 2025 as America prepares to enter the 250th birthday of the country.

We will begin a very aggressive international marketing and sales effort in support of the new British Airways flight to London, as well as the Paris Charles De Gaulle Delta flight and Air Canada service to Toronto. Another Cincy Region initiative, we will secure market representation in London, Germany and Toronto and focus B2B efforts on educating tour operators and agents in the market including a B2C focus that layers media and marketing effort in these markets.

We will conduct:

• Three sales missions to London in 2023: one pre-launch, one during launch and again in the late fall

• Two sales missions to Toronto/Quebec in 2023

• One sales mission to Paris and Germany

We will also host a Cincy Region booth at IPW in San Antonio and work to host an inbound British/ German/Canadian familiarization tour in late June for the Taylor Swift Tour stop in Cincinnati. We will leverage quite a bit of the state ARPA recovery funds on international development in 2023.

Marketing & Brand Efforts 3

The Northern Kentucky brand is well represented as part of the Cincy Region collaboration. This has been a strong year of performance for both efforts. The meetNKY marketing plan has generated close to a million sessions on the website and the regional marketing plan has generated more than seven million sessions. A regional visitors guide was created this year with balanced coverage of all sides of the region, and both organizations will continue to generate the guide with our partners. Our bourbon initiatives continue to showcase our portion of the regional story and The B-Line® has had its best year since its inception in 2018. We secured more media impressions than ever through a dedicated media effort in telling NKY’s claim as part of the Commonwealth and as part of Cincy. Highlights include signature pieces in Conde Nast, The New York Times and of course the designation as a Best Place to Visit in 2023. We have earned media coverage this year worth close to $6.5 million and will continue this focus in 2023 as we add a new Communications Manager.

We have worked with partners to create new event experiences in 2022 that we will continue in 2023 like the John G. Carlisle Bottled in Bond Celebration in March, the NKY Cocktail Classic in October and the expansion of Dark Charge with Braxton Brewing into a two-day Winter Block Party. In 2023, we will plan to enhance this strategy as we work with Turfway Park Racing & Gaming on Kentucky Derby Events and the Purple People Bridge to continue showcasing our linkages and differentiators from Cincinnati.

Looking Forward

Our media plan for 2023 will also leverage the ARPA DMO funding to expand our reach to additional destinations and create a full outdoor experience media plan to increase dwell time in the destination. We will work to better educate our local community on all aspects of the destination so we can capture positive in-market visitor spend from locals that host friends and family in NKY. In partnership with the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and Northern Kentucky Tri-ED, we will explore a NKY branding initiative to fully articulate the look, feel and tone of Northern Kentucky’s appeal for use in tourism, business, and talent advertising.

We are approaching a point where moving content from meetNKY’s website is needed to ensure Northern Kentucky is fully represented as part of the regional alliance, and we own our NKY portion of the story. We will evaluate the transition to one comprehensive regional website as we get deeper into 2023.

CVG Airport

BLINK

MegaCorp Pavilion

Destination Development

This is an exciting time in Northern Kentucky and the entire region. This year was noticeable as we celebrated the reopening of a reimagined Turfway Park, welcomed new hotels, experienced the demand from the return of the Cincinnati Music Festival, BLINK, large regional concerts, large conventions, and a restart of business travel, although not fully recovered.

Looking Forward

We have added a new Product Development Director to focus on the implementation of the 2022 Master Plan. We have initiated several development projects for the destination including issuing an RFP for a consultant to evaluate the future of the Northern Kentucky Convention Center, issuing an RFP for a consultant to evaluate the destination’s needs for sport facilities to continue generating room night demand, focus on a public art investment to enhance the visual appeal of the destination and working in collaboration with Southbank Partners on a riverfront way-finding project. In addition, we are working at the city, county, and state level with partners to keep the focus on tourism

development and continue to add new projects to the destination. We will focus on Kentucky distilleries in 2023 to ensure that Northern Kentucky receives at least one if not more major distillery tasting facilities in the area. We are also focusing on outdoor product development as we have proven with our data partner Zartico that visitors to this region are looking for adventure on trails, rivers, and paths.

We will continue our partnership with the Kentucky Tourism Industry Association to be an advocate for the industry, especially on the need to focus on talent development for the industry, as well as protecting tourism funds for tourism development. We will also continue our Cincy Region partnerships as we work to support a robust film industry in the region, support existing events and potentially create a new regional event, River Roots. In addition, we will determine a future for sports sales and marketing in this region. We will also work to include Butler, Warren and Clermont counties, as well as the Northern Kentucky River Region in all regional work.

ORGANIZATIONAL STABILITY

To ensure complete transparency and accountability, we will continue to utilize MCM & Associates as our third-party accounting firm to ensure financial reporting is compliant with the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). We will continue the monthly Finance Committee meetings and ensure we are generating a return on investment for funds leveraged for promotion, sales, and marketing. We will conduct a full financial audit on the bedtax receipts as well as the utilization of ARPA funding and receive no material filings.

We have achieved a full return to bureau reserve levels of 20% of revenues to ensure the continuity of the organization during an emergency and have built for the first time a special project fund to leverage for unique and unbudgeted opportunities. The organization continues to operate in a lean and nimble manner, however we will add additional roles in 2023 to continue to support the organization’s growth. We will limit salaries/benefits to 25% of projected revenues and cap operating expenses

at less than 10% of revenue ensuring we are always putting 65-70% of revenues into returnon-investment programs.

By the mid-point of 2023, we will receive the final consultant report on the Northern Kentucky Convention Center and that direction will dictate the usage of the special 1% transient tax collection for the Development Fund.

Operations will continue to enhance the accountability of the organization by researching and potentially implementing an investment strategy for the Development Fund. The Bureau will research a model to enable hotel partners to report and pay taxes online.

The meetNKY organization is focused on ensuring we continue as a good steward of visitor generated tax dollars, as well as perform as a good fiduciary agent for the American Recovery Plan Act Fund allocated via the 2022 State Budget.

New Riff Distillery

Turfway Park

Boone Co. Distilling

Roebling Murals

BB Riverboats

Acknowledgments

meetNKY Staff

meetNKY Board of Commissioners

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE COMMISSIONERS AT LARGE

Guy Van Rooyen Chair

Subhas Patel Treasurer

David Delbello

Bimal Patel

Brian Fry

Terri Bernstein

William I. Donnermeyer

Matt Duda Rep. Joseph Fischer

Emily Palmer Wolff

Rep. Adam Koenig

Jim Lokesak Mark Looy Sandy Ritter Rep. Sal Santoro

Shannon Smith Ken Lewis

Dot Crane, CTA Senior Content Marketing Manager

Cassie Hurst, CTA Tourism Information Coordinator

Julie Kirkpatrick, CTA, CDME

President & CEO

Stefanie Wyckoff, CTA Director, Convention Sales

Mary Watkins, CTA Director, Bureau Operations

Carla M. Quercioli, CTA Director, Destination Engagement

Christy Staten, CTA Convention Sales Executive

Amanda Johannemann Director, Destination Marketing & Communications

Stacy Howell, CTA Destination Engagement Manager

Josh Quinn Director, Product Development

Gina Kohler Regional Director, Leisure Sales