BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — For a second straight year Kentucky shattered tourism records. Gov. Andy Beshear, D-Ky., made the announcement during his Team Kentucky update on Thursday.

What You Need To Know

  • For a second consecutive year, Kentucky broke tourism records

  • About 79 million visitors came to the Bluegrass State.
  • Bowling Green and Warren County saw visitors bring in over $477 million

  • Warren County ranks fifth in tourism spending out of all 120 counties

The state saw nearly $14 billion in economic impact last year because of tourism. About 79 million visitors came to the Bluegrass State.

Cities like Bowling Green are also benefitting from the tourism boom and bringing in more money than ever before.

According to Bowling Green Convention Area & Visitors Bureau executive director, Sherry Murphy, it’s quite the jump from previous years.

Murphy said, “We had $477 million spent here in Warren County by our visitors and that’s a really nice number to tout.”

That is a 7.9% increase from last year’s customer spending on tourism and sets the record for most spending on Warren County tourism in one year. Tourism has been increasing the past two years. From 2021 to 2022, the city also saw a 5.9% increase in tourism spending; these increases were not expected.

Murphy said, “Post COVID, we’re all figuring everything out, so it was really nice and validating to see that we saw an increase over the 2022 year.”

Warren County ranks fifth in tourism spending out of all 120 counties. According to Murphy, their number one attraction for tourism is the National Corvette Museum.

According to Ryan Eichler, the museum’s director of marketing and communications, they have seen more visitors than in previous years thanks in part to Corvette celebrating a milestone anniversary in 2023.

Eichler said, “It was the 70th anniversary of Corvette. That was in the summertime. We opened a new exhibit, saw a tremendous crowd for that.”

And says they expect more visitors in 2024.

Eichler said, “2024 is going to be even more of an amazing year. It’s going to be the museum’s 30th anniversary. We are also welcoming more than 8,000 fans into Labor Day weekend for our anniversary event and our national caravan. Now that happens once every five years, so you’re going to be seeing all these Corvette fans pouring into Bowling Green.”

Some of the other attractions that brought in tourists were Lost River Cave, Chaney’s Dairy Barn and Beech Bend Park.

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