Bowling Green Convention and Visitors Bureau records

Collection – Multiple Containers

Identifier: MS-1277

Staff Only

Collection Overview

Abstract

This collection is composed entirely of the records of the City of Bowling Green Convention and Visitors Bureau. These records include director’s and executive board meeting agendas, meeting minutes, state audits, financial statements, published visitor guides, email correspondences, and reports.

Dates

Creation: 1980-2021
Creation: Majority of material found within 2001-2020

Extent

.9 Cubic Feet (3 letter archives boxes)

Content Description

The records of the Bowling Green Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) provide a detailed picture of the city’s now-defunct tourism agency. The collection presents various strategies the bureau utilized to expand the city’s tourist industry. The Chamber of Commerce established the bureau to promote tourism within the city in 1980. After its creation, both the city and the bureau entered into an agreement in which the bureau received a percentage of the city’s ‘hotel-motel’ tax. These agreements were legally codified as city ordinances, passed every 1 to 3 years over the course of the bureau’s existence. The mission of the bureau was to improve local business revenue, increase hotel stays, and grow the city’s notoriety. Its records cover the entire span of the bureau’s history, although the bulk of the annual records are from 2001-2020.

Annual records of the bureau are organized chronologically according to the year they were created. Files contain financial records: yearly profit and loss statements, budgets, and tax documents; administrative records: agendas, meeting minutes, project proposals, codes of conducts, and reports; and legal records: state audits, city ordinances, operation licenses, and contracts. Annual records provide insight into the budgets and financing apparatuses of a city agency, plans to promote tourism in small towns, state auditing practices, and institutional history.

The 2020 Annual Records, in particular, cover the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism at both the local and national level, showing how city governments had to grapple with a decline in tax revenue, cut budgets, and eliminate bureaucratic offices like the CVB.

The bureau also published a variety of visitor guides and purchased ads in travel magazines, promoting the city of Bowling Green across the state of Ohio. These published materials include information about local events, news, restaurants, shops, hotels, and services. Such materials provide cultural insights into the city of Bowling Green throughout the early 2000s and 2010s.

Biographical / Historical

Bowling Green’s Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) was established in 1980 with the passage of city Ord. 3606. The bureau first operated within the city’s Chamber of Commerce, before becoming its own separate entity in 2005. Over the course of the 2000s, the bureau received funding increases as the city provided larger shares of the ‘hotel-motel’ tax to the bureau. COVID 19 and the ensuing pandemic constrained the city’s spending in 2020. As a result, and in an effort to cut costs, the city council did not renew its agreement with the CVB, removing its funding. Due to the agreement renewal failure, lack of funding, and a decline in tourism, the CVB formally dissolved in 2021.

During its operation, the CVB was, according to its operating agreement, “responsible for promoting and publicizing the City of Bowling Green, Ohio, in order to bring the patronage and business of tourists and cultural, educational, religious, professional, and sports organizations into the City, for the benefit of the citizens of the City and of the business community thereof.”

Conditions Governing Access

No known access restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Researchers using this collection assume full responsibility for conforming to the laws of libel, privacy, and copyright, and are responsible for securing permissions necessary for publication or reproduction.

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Arrangement

Files are arranged in three series. The contents within the series are arranged chronologically. Series 1. Publications and Visitors guides; Series 2. Bowling Green Ordinances Related to the Convention and Visitors Bureau; Series 3. Annual Records. Series 3 (Annual Records) contains the respective year’s financial records, state audits, annual reports, meeting minutes and agendas, email correspondence, and city ordinances.