CINCINNATI — Visit Cincy Interim President and CEO Julie Kirkpatrick watched dump trucks and heavy machinery moving dirt at the corner of Fifth and Plum streets, just south of the First Financial Center, and knew that the promise of a 700-room Marriott headquarters hotel would finally make Cincinnati competitive to win bigger, better conventions.
The official groundbreaking for the 21-story hotel is planned for July 21. When it opens in late 2028 or early 2029, meeting planners will get what they’ve been asking for in Cincinnati: a new hotel connected by skybridge to a renovated convention center.
“Last week we were very delighted to host 16 meeting planners in this facility for a customer advisory board who were giving us advice on how to best position this investment, this destination against some of our competitors,” Kirkpatrick said in a July 7 interview. “And they were really happy to see dirt being moved across the street for that headquarters hotel.”
After months of delays, project developer Portman Holdings announced in June that it had closed on $540 million in financing to develop the hotel in partnership with the city of Cincinnati, Hamilton County, the state of Ohio, Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. (3CDC), The Port of Greater Cincinnati and Visit Cincy.
The new hotel will anchor the newly renovated convention center, with an outdoor terrace overlooking Fifth Street, expansive meeting space, multiple ballrooms and ground-floor retail.
Ahead of the groundbreaking, the WCPO 9 I-Team sat down with Kirkpatrick, who is also CEO of meetNKY, Northern Kentucky’s tourism bureau. The following are excerpts from that interview, with some answers shortened for brevity.
What was it like having the convention center closed for 18 months?
It was very hard. Our downtown urban core was losing thousands of convention center attendees when the convention center was closed for the second half of 2024, and all of 2025. We definitely heard it from our hotel community, our restaurant community that we need these convention attendees back in the urban core. So, I’m glad that period is over. There is always pain in the progress, though. It is exciting to have this facility open and bringing in 50,000-plus attendees this year.
WATCH: Can Cincinnati finally compete with Columbus, Indy, Louisville for conventions once HQ hotel opens?
What kinds of conventions did Cincinnati typically host before the remodel?
Prior to the remodel, this market was known for what we call the SMERF (Social, Military, Educational, Religious, and Fraternal groups) business. Some of the reunions, religious groups, probably the lower-rated groups that might come to third-tier destinations because we just didn’t have the facilities to attract the marquee national organizations.
What are your goal conventions?
We have a list of 100 of what we think are the most aspirational pieces of business for this facility that have never come to Cincinnati. They’re going to our competitors right now. They’re going to Columbus, to Louisville, to Indianapolis, to Birmingham, Alabama, to Nashville. This facility and all the investment is going to help us unlock that business. It is multimillion-dollars of impact. We’ve never been able to what we call, "play the big game," but it is time to "play the big game" for Cincinnati.
How far out is it for you to get those big-deal conventions?
I think a lot of people would think that we’re just focused in on this year and next year. But I can tell you our vision is all the way out to 2036; we’re talking to potential businesses. We have about 1.1 million room nights of business that we are talking to right now, all the way out from 2028 to 2036, and we’re going to keep pushing it out as far as we need to.
What have you booked this year?
This year has been what we call a ramp-in year … We’ve had some national associations like the Snow and Ice Removal Association. In June, for 3 weeks we hosted the ETS AP Test Readers; this is a group that brings in teachers from all over the country that grade AP tests here in the convention center. But I can tell you at the end of July we are going to host one of the biggest conventions this market has ever hosted. The biggest thing we’ve done since the World Choir Games of 2012, the brothers of Omega Psi Phi Inc. Grand Conclave will be here, 10,000 attendees with 20,000 friends and family; that’s 30,000 people walking and roaming this convention center, this city, leaving behind close to a $20-million economic impact. That is huge … they booked 25 hotels in this region.
What do meeting planners want before they book a convention?
Meeting planners are very specific in what I call the four gates that you need to check off before they will take your destination seriously. One is a world-class convention center. Is it full of light, is it full of character? Is it more than just a beige ballroom? That is an important one. No. 2, do you have a walkable downtown with vibrancy, great public space? Do you have a world-class airport that can get people in and out of the destination easily? And finally, do you have a headquarters hotel? Do you have somewhere where a majority of attendees can have community very closely connected to your convention center?
Why is that headquarters hotel so important and that skywalk?
If you look at who we are most comparable to, cities like Indianapolis, which has multiple hotels, a JW Marriott, a Marriott connected to their convention center, that’s easy for the meeting planner, and the meeting planners want it easy. They want it easy for their attendees. They also want to make sure that their attendees are staying in the hotels that are part of the block because there are incentives tied to performance. So, if we’re offering eight, nine,10 hotels, it becomes really easy for attendees to leak out of the block, which is not great for a meeting planner because they want to keep their community corralled.
What are some of the selling points that you use to sell the city?
Cincinnati’s access is unparalleled. The direct flights that we have at CVG. The access that we have from I-75, I-71. It is so easy to get to Cincy, and that’s been called out by our meeting planner community. No. 2 is the value that we have here. It is Midwest hospitality at a Midwest price point. Whereas if you look at the East Coast, the West Coast, they are so expensive right now … The vibrancy that we have in downtown, that is probably our No. 1 selling point against our competitors like Columbus, Louisville, Indianapolis. We have a vibrant, unique downtown, and that sells itself when we get the meeting planners here.
There was some pushback on the hotel room number not being 800. Does that make any difference in your opinion?
It really doesn’t. I know how expensive it is to build a hotel these days, so to lose 100 rooms on the headquarters hotel, I don’t think it's measurable. I have to salute Portman as well for the investment they’re making in the Westin … Projects like this, any time they are over 500 rooms, they lift a whole market. When this hotel opens in 2029, you’re going to see hotel investment happening across the board in downtown. Because people are going to want to bring their product up to the next best thing that’s going in across the street.
You mentioned the Westin; is Portman also involved in a renovation of the Westin?
They are; Portman has now had an ownership deal with the Westin. They closed about a year ago, and they are making a major investment in bringing that property up to a 4-diamond level. I believe the renovations start later this year. They’ll carry on into next year. They’ll probably take a floor at a time, but I am not up to date on the timeline.
Is there enough business to support so many hotel rooms?
There absolutely is. This market actually could support a thousand more hotel rooms. If you look at Indianapolis, Columbus, we are actually undersized in hotel rooms in the urban core. When we bring in large conventions like our Omega convention that’s coming in, they’re using hotels in Northern Kentucky. They’re actually stretched all the way to the airport.
What do you have booked in the years out, can you share?
We have some great conventions coming in 2027, national associations. In 2028, we’ve got some really interesting association groups, like ETS will be back again. We’ll have the AP testers again. Some national trade associations that I can’t actually disclose their information right now under an NDA. But in 2029 we’re going to host another mega convention, Moose International, which is another fraternal organization. They made a bet, a long-range bet on this convention center and the headquarters hotel being open, so that is going to be another on-par event with the Omegas.
What kind of feedback are you getting on the convention center renovations?
We are getting phenomenal feedback. Our meeting planners cannot believe the soul in this building. It is so light, it is so airy, it is so usable. That is the way that they describe it. Not that our convention center was bad before, but this has been a huge upgrade. Then we put art all the way through the building. That is who we are, we are an art-based community. To bring that culture in here and have the beautiful Elm Street plaza as an anchor where people can get out of the building and get into a world-class park that is filled with art, they are blown away.
What about the economic impact and hotel rooms this year?
This year we are going to generate close to $60 million in economic impact from conventions; that’s just in year one. If we compound that out in10 years, we plan on increasing it next year, increasing it in 2028, and then get the headquarters hotel open in 2029, we have forecast to start to see a doubling of impact. This investment we absolutely want to pay it off in the first 10 years, and we’ll do it.
So, in 2029?
We want to go for 120,000 room nights. We set goals every year. Obviously, we’re in the ramp-in right now, so our goals are anywhere from 70,000 to 80,000 room nights. That is what the research shows we can do with our current hotel base. We add 700 hotel rooms in 2029, we go up to 120,000 room nights. So that economic impact will increase as well because we’ll be bringing in higher-rated conventions that spend more money.
Do you have open weekends that you wish you didn’t have?
Convention centers are never 100% occupied. The best convention centers in the world I consider Chicago, Orlando, Las Vegas … they’re about 70 to 75% occupied. It is complex to move a show out, move a show in, so you have downtime. Holidays are always downtime. Again, do I wish we were at 100% occupancy? Of course I do, but that’s just not realistic. Our goal is to get it to 60 to 70% occupied.
Can you share occupancy rate this year and your goals?
This urban core runs about 70% occupancy in high season and we have a lot of events in Cincinnati: we have great Reds games, we have FC, we have concerts. It is really hard to grow occupancy when you’re already at a pretty healthy occupancy. So really our sweet spot is to bring something in November, December, January, February, March. We spend a lot of time focusing on those need months because that’s where we can move the needle and bring in some needed economic impact.
Do you get negative reactions to high-profile crime, like the downtown brawl last summer?
We talked about this as well in our customer advisory board. If you look at all cities in urban environments, whether it's Charlotte, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, these issues are happening all over the country right now. It’s how your city reacts to it, and they are noting how our city reacts to it. We take it very, very seriously. They see the increased police presence in our urban core, that was noted. They were seeing how everybody interacted during the (Noah Kahan) concert last week. And they’re like, "This is not anything that’s not happening in other places." So again, we try to say we’re a big city, so big city things happen.
(Visit Cincy’s Customer Advisory Board is a group of 16 meeting planners from across the country who provide feedback on Cincinnati as a convention destination. The group was here June 30-July 2.)
Do they ask if downtown is safe?
It’s absolutely a question that meeting planners ask: What is crime in your central business district? I can say honestly that crime has gone down in our central business district because that statistic is true. They’re asking that of our friends in Detroit, Charlotte, Indianapolis, everywhere because their number one job is keeping their attendees safe.
Do you have a wish list for other projects that you’d like to see done in Cincinnati?
Cincinnati needs a world-class arena. I don’t have an opinion where it should go, but I can tell you we need it. It is another thing that can help elevate the story here in Cincinnati … we do get bypassed for a lot of NCAA events. We also have not hosted a political convention in the city for a long time, and that arena is a critical piece.
That came up during your meeting last week?
It did come up.
What did they say about our arena?
They said we have an undersized arena. It is not very usable for some of the marquee things that need to happen in an arena, and they’ll compare us to the Yum! Center in Louisville, in Indianapolis with their arena. Louisville just got the USA Swimming Olympic trials; that’s huge. We are missing some of those pieces.
Could a new arena get paired with anything at the convention center?
There are a whole slew of conventions that use a center and an arena; combined, we’re just not being very successful in bidding on those right now … Large sporting events, definitely anything with NCAA is going to use the convention center as well as an arena. The Republican or Democratic National Convention. There are large religious gatherings that need an arena as well as a convention center. There are definitely some big trade shows, and I’m talking about 10,000- to 15,000-person trade shows that need an arena close by.
Is there anything else that you’d like to see or that they pointed out?
We have all the pieces. We also have something that a lot of cities don’t have, and that is a culture of vibrancy in our urban core. I would love to see that continue to be nurtured. I would love to see it continue to spread all over our downtown. I’m very excited to see what FC Cincinnati is doing in our West End … and we will continue to develop our riverfront. We’ll continue to develop CVG. I want more dots on the map. I want more West Coast dots on the map, and I want to fly to other places internationally.
What is the utilization rate of the First Financial Center?
This question requires a little explanation because convention centers measure utilization rather than occupancy. A utilization rate of approximately 40% to 60% is considered healthy because the calculation must account for the time required to move large events and exhibits into and out of the building. The long-term goal for the First Financial Center is approximately 50% utilization from convention business.
In 2026, the First Financial Center is operating at roughly half of its long-term utilization target as Cincinnati rebuilds its convention calendar following the facility’s reopening. Utilization is expected to continue growing in 2027 and 2028, with the strongest growth anticipated in 2029 and beyond as the new headquarters hotel comes online.
It is also important to note that these utilization figures do not include many local events, galas, public shows and other programs that use the center throughout the year, including RedsFest, the Cincinnati Home + Garden Show and the Greater Cincinnati Holiday Market.
(WCPO asked this question to Visit Cincy spokesperson Eileen Osborne after the interview. Her response was edited for brevity.)
