meetNKY is in the business of fun, and making NKY into a top tourism destination
In Kentucky, and especially Northern Kentucky, tourism is big business.
In 2023, Kentucky saw $13.8 billion in economic impact, 95,222 jobs and $996.2 million in state and local taxes generated from tourism, making it the best year ever for Kentucky tourism.
In Northern Kentucky, Kenton, Campbell and Boone counties alone generated almost 13,000 jobs, $123.1 million in state and local taxes and over $2 billion in economic impact from tourism. The Northern Kentucky region is second only to Louisville in the commonwealth of Kentucky
for tourism.
Julie Kirkpatrick, president and CEO of meetNKY, says this is for good reason. “We’re at the top of the south, and we have the premier airport in a four-state region,” she says. (Kirkpatrick includes West Virginia in this four-state region as well as Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.)
She believes Northern Kentucky’s impact is also due to its proximity to Cincinnati. “We have the best of both worlds,” she says. “I know that when we get our Cincy Region economic impact report later this year, we’re going to beat the pants off of Louisville.” (Kirkpatrick clarifies that she does not see Louisville as “competition” and that some of her “besties” work at Louisville Tourism.)
Kirkpatrick’s passion is shared with Visit Cincy and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG).
“We work really closely with downtown Cincinnati and Hamilton County on telling a broader story about the region, especially internationally because of the strength of the CVG International Airport,” she says. “It makes great sense to go over to origin markets for the great flights that we have in this region.”
These markets include Toronto, Paris and London. CVG just passed the one-year anniversary of the direct British Airways flight from CVG to Heathrow Airport.
The London British Airways flight doesn’t just get you from NKY to London in a quick seven-hour flight but is also a “gateway” to other places through the British Airways network. “You could have your quick flight to Heathrow and then you can continue on to India, Singapore, the Middle East,” Kirkpatrick says.
Visit Cincy, meetNKY and CVG have ongoing discussions on how they are marketing in London, Paris, Toronto and other destinations, and also how they are marketing in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky to residents with access to these flights. This is a relatively new effort, starting in 2020 during the COVID-19 shutdown.
“We knew that the only way we could get back was to get back together,”
she says.
Storytelling has become a big part of meetNKY’s international promotions. “We’re over in London telling stories about New Riff and Findlay Market and the American Sign Museum and the Newport Aquarium and all of these really unique attributes that we have in this region,” Kirkpatrick shares. “For so long, we had rallied around this idea of, what’s our one thing? And we don’t have this one thing. We have all of these cultures.”
In Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, music, arts and sports culture thrive. One of the biggest parts of the culture, though, is the most infamous. “Explaining Cincinnati chili to Brits…they are blown away,” Kirkpatrick laughs. “We take Cincy spice packets over to London and teach them how to make their own Cincy chili.”
MeetNKY does a lot of work with the commonwealth of Kentucky, which Kirkpatrick says has a strong international brand. “People are very curious internationally about the South, and the idea of [NKY] being a gateway to the South, but also being this amazing urban area that includes more breweries that any one city probably should have, married up with the Kentucky Bourbon Trail since it starts here in Northern Kentucky,” Kirkpatrick says. “All of these things are really interesting internationally.”
One of Kirkpatrick’s favorite stories about meetNKY’s international impact comes after the launch of the British Airways London flight at CVG and an article in the London Times about it. “For what we do, to get an article like that, it is like a moonshot,” she says.
She shares that after the article came out, the owners of Revival Vintage Bottle Shop in Covington called her and said they had guests from the United Kingdom who were there because they read about it in the London Times. “I was just like, ‘I’m going to fall on the floor,’” she laughs. “That’s huge!
“I love the idea of this region becoming more known because I think most people, not only in America, but I know internationally, don’t know what the Cincy idea is,” Kirkpatrick adds. “I think about everything that’s happening with BLINK and the energy in this region, and I think it absolutely leaves an impression.”
Kirkpatrick sees the region’s tourism impact only growing in the next few years, due in part to its singularity. “The two threads of our culture coming together here, it’s like nowhere else in the United States of America,” she says.
