Local tourism on rise after severe Covid-19 revenue losses

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – According to the annual survey of tourism spending, visitors in Warren County spent around 22 percent less than other years – that was about an 88 million dollar decrease from 2019.

Labor income for the industry in Warren County decreased by 15 percent, and visitors to the county generated 23 percent less in state and local taxes than in 2019.

Three Springs Hospitality Regional Sales Director Claudia Sweeney said watching 75 percent of their hotel employees have to be dismissed due to so few tourists was heartbreaking. 

“I remember significantly a week where every phone call that I took, every piece of business that we had on the books for this for the seeable future, cancelled,” said Sweeney.

Sweeney reported that now the three Bowling Green hotels she serves are back to the same capacity they were this time of year before the pandemic. Those hotels are currently in need of employees. 

“I called as many people as we could back….but we need people. If I can make any plea to anybody out there, it is that we have open positions that we need to hire good qualified folks for the jobs that we offer,” said Sweeney. 

Convention & Visitors Bureau Communications Director Nora Bryant said Warren County employed almost 3000 employees in the hospitality industry pre-Covid. Due to the pandemic, 1000 of those employees lost their jobs. That’s one-third of the county’s employees left without jobs. 

“It went from one day everything was perfectly fine. We were getting ready for 20,000 events, then people didn’t have a job the next day, and no one really knew when it was going to come back,” said Nora.

Bryant said thankfully hotels are back at almost the same capacity they saw in 2019.

“To see the hotels full, and to be able to hire again, it’s just really happy,” said Bryant.

“We’re excited that we are almost back to normal with everything that we are offering. We serve breakfast again. We have our coffee stations back out, and so we are just excited to have folks back,” said Sweeney.

Bryant also says that four auto events coming up in September The HolleyLS Fest, the Holley’s MoParty, the Challenger Fest, and the Holley Ford Intergalactic Festival which will hopefully help out the tourism industry.