How Louisville’s top tourism official plans to shift into growth mode

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. Follow us on popular podcast services to never miss an episode.   

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Cleo Battle is ready to shift from recovery mode to growth mode.

Battle is the president and CEO of Louisville Tourism. After three years of uncertainty for the tourism industry, he is leading the organization as it plans to attract a global audience.

Shea Van Hoy, editor of Louisville Business First, sat down with Battle to discuss what he was looking forward to and trends in the tourism industry. This conversation is the first in a series of executive interviews on the Access Louisville Podcast.

Something that keeps Louisville from attracting different kinds of meetings or conventions is its hotel capacity, one that is lower than peer cities, Battle explained. There are some hotels under construction, but currently Louisville is under-hoteled.

Beyond this construction, there’s another change coming to the hotel industry. Reporter Michael L. Jones explains a new hotel tax and its implications for Louisville and its tourists. 

 Still, Louisville is hosting several large-scale events this year, including, of course, the Kentucky Derby, which has expected of 250,000. It also includes National Farm Machinery Show and Championship Tractor Pull and Thunder Over Louisville.

We discuss all this and more on the Access Louisville podcast.

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It’s co-hosted by David A. Mann and Laurel Deppen. Our guests this week are Van Hoy and Jones.

It's available on popular podcast services, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, which are linked above. You also can listen to the show in the player above.