From VISIT BOWLING GREEN, OHIO
Visit BG Ohio is proud to announce that it won a Ruby Award in the Website category for its revamped website, visitbgohio.org, at the 2026 Ohio Conference on Travel. The award was presented during the RUBY Awards luncheon on Oct. 8 at The Roberts Centre in Wilmington, celebrating excellence in Ohio’s tourism industry.
This year’s RUBY Awards recognized achievements across 17 categories and saw a record-breaking 267 entries submitted from across the state.
“When we decided to invest in rebuilding our website, our goal was bigger than creating a better experience for visitors,” said Mary Hinkelman, executive director of the Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce and Visit BG Ohio. “We recognized that our website is often one of the first places people go to learn about Bowling Green – and that includes people considering our community as a place to live, work, build a career, start a business, or invest. The results we see from this investment have been so overwhelmingly positive, with increased engagement and traffic demonstrating that people are actively seeking out information about our community.”
“By strengthening how we tell Bowling Green’s story and making it easier for people to discover all that our community has to offer, we are not only supporting tourism but also helping create awareness and interest that can contribute to long-term economic growth,” Hinkelman continued. “Every new visitor, resident, employee, entrepreneur, and investor who discovers Bowling Green represents an opportunity to strengthen out local economy and our community’s future.”
As a result, comparing 2025 to 2026, the new website has led to returning users growing 178% and is a sign that visitors are not just finding the site but returning to it as a planning tool. The new site follows the Visit BG brand and organizes pages for web and mobile users. In addition, Visit BG has rolled out a new chatbot to help visitors plan their visit and navigate the site.
Organic search traffic also climbed 180% in the same period. Visit BG has achieved these results by integrating third-party event information scraping directly into the site, bypassing embeds to directly feed LLM-based search tools. The results of the efforts are corroborated by its development partner Great Lakes Studios’ independent case study.
The award entry for VisitBGOhio.org was prepared by Zane Kirchner, marketing and engagement lead for Visit BG Ohio, with supporting documents provided by Great Lakes Studios. Visit BG Ohio extends gratitude to its partners for their efforts to help create this resource for visitors and the community.
- Mary Hinkelman – BG Chamber of Commerce/Visit BG Ohio
- Joe Vargo – Great Lakes Studios
- Dan Klinzig – Great Lakes Studios
- Trish Schaefer – Vibemap
- Steve Pepple – Vibemap
In addition to this success, Visit BG and its partners continue working to improve these systems. Visit BG has also recently deployed a new business listing system on its site that works to automatically update and manage said business’s information.
“We couldn’t be happier with these website improvements and look forward to its visitors using it to learn more about things to do and to play their stay here in BG,” Kirchner said.
Everyone is invited to explore the site today and find out what Bowling Green has to offer at VisitBGOhio.org.
