Last spring, the Owensboro-Daviess County Convention & Visitors Bureau and Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari worked out an arrangement for the CVB to use the theme park’s bloggers to help promote Owensboro.
Josh Moore, Holiday World’s digital communications strategist, said, “This is a new program we’re starting this year. We were going with five or six influencers, but we had so many good applicants that we decided to go with eight.”
They’re called HoliBloggers.
And last weekend, one of them, Jamie Ward, who lives just north of Indianapolis, visited Owensboro.
“It was my first trip to Owensboro,” she said. “I was pleasantly surprised. I learned that it’s the Bluegrass Capital of the World and Kentucky’s fourth-largest city. There’s so much to do there. It has a small-town feel with big-city things to do. It still has small-town friendliness.”
Her travel blog is titled “Cornfields and High Heels.”
On her webpage, Ward explains, “I like to throw on the occasional pair of heels and embrace a night out in the big city, but I’ve also learned to appreciate the farm-town living, country drives and sunsets over the cornfields. ”
Dave Kirk, the CVB’s destination management director, said Indianapolis is one of the cities the CVB is targeting for visitors.
It’s about a three-hour drive from Owensboro.
Ward said she and her husband got to Owensboro on Thursday evening and stayed at the Holiday Inn Owensboro Riverfront.
“We went to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, Green River Distilling Co., Western Kentucky Botanical Garden, Friday After 5 and ate a lot of food,” she said.
Ward said they ate at the Miller House, City Walk of Owensboro, Old Hickory Bar-B-Que and visited three coffee shops — The Creme Coffee House, Gramps Coffee & Donuts and Red Swing Coffee.
“We visited the Cottage Farm Stand on our way out of town Saturday,” she said. “We wanted to go to Niko’s, but we ran out of time.”
Ward said she got into blogging five years ago when she moved to the Indianapolis area from northern Indiana.
She said she started with a food-focused blog and moved into writing about travel.
“I loved it,” Ward said. “It turned into a hobby and grew into something bigger than I thought it would.”
Now, she’s doing it full time and has a travel book coming out in September.
Kirk said all the CVB had to do for Ward’s visit was comp a hotel room for two nights and meals.
One social influencer last year wanted $13,000 on top of that, he said.
The CVB turned that one down.
“I’m really passionate about travel,” Ward said.
Owensboro is teaming with Holiday World in an effort to persuade visitors to the theme park to spend the night in Owensboro.
Kirk said earlier that not only is Owensboro trying to capture people from Nashville and farther south on their way home from the park, but it expects people from St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis and other cities who go to Holiday World for more than one day to spend a night in Owensboro.
There are few hotels near the theme park, he said.
And Owensboro is an easy drive.
Smothers Park is free, Kirk said, and parents can relax in the evenings while their children play in the park.
