What tourists come to Louisville for

Louisville has plenty to offer visitors, but can the city's tourism sector keep up with demand? We chat about that and more with Louisville Tourism CEO Cleo Battle on this week's Access Louisville podcast.Battle is on the show this week for an interview with LBF Editor-in-Chief Shea Van Hoy. The two talk about Louisville coming off a fourth consecutive year of record tourism revenue, generating a $4.4 billion economic impact in Jefferson County."Thursday through Sunday in this city, we are jamming every month of the year," he said.But he notes that Louisville needs additional hotel rooms to keep pace with growing conventions and remain competitive with peer cities. This was something that Senior Reporter Joel Stinnett wrote about in a recent cover story. Through Louisville Tourism, 610 meetings and events are booked each year. Those events are growing, he said, but in order for them to stay in Louisville, the city needs to grow with them. "That's our challenge," he said. "We have the smallest amount of hotel rooms in our competitive set. We have the smallest number of direct flights in our competitive set. We have to compete and so we need to grow.In addition to the convention side of the business, Battle and Van Hoy talked about big events that bring guests to town, including music festivals like Bourbon & Beyond and Louder Than Life as well as Louisville's plans to host the USA Gymnastics Olympic Trials in 2028."I don't know that it's sunk in for people that the Olympic flags are going to fly above Louisville and represent Louisville and Kentucky," he said. "There is just not a price you can put on that type of exposure and advertising and marketing that we're going to get from that."Battle also shares what Louisville Tourism is doing to market the city, why Chicago remains Louisville's top visitor market and what trends he's watching across the tourism industry.Access Louisville, sponsored by Baird, is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. You can listen in the player above. You can also follow it on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, which are linked above.