Bowling Green Convention and Visitors Bureau records

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.