Lexington’s tourism agency spends big on bonuses, expenses. Does it pay off?
Selling Lexington to outsiders who may visit the Bluegrass is proving to be good business for VisitLEX, the city’s tourism organization.
The agency is looking at a budget of over $13 million this year, offering competitive six-figure salaries with sizable bonuses to some of its best-performing employees, and is willing to pay sizable expenses for local fine dining and other services as it seeks to bring more tourists to the city, according to financial records obtained by the Herald-Leader through the Kentucky Open Records Act.
But VisitLEX President Mary Quinn Ramer told the Herald-Leader the organization is seeing a great deal of success in what it does, and is bringing in lots of visitors. VisitLEX says its worked contributed tens of thousands of nights booked in Lexington by visitors last year.
“Oftentimes, people say, ‘Oh, well, Lexington sells itself.’ And there couldn’t be anything further from the truth, right? No, that’s what we do,” Ramer said. “We’re constantly selling the city. We’re constantly reminding people to remember us.”
And while VisitLex is funded by public dollars, that money typically comes directly from the visitors it works to attract, not the residents who call Lexington home.
VisitLEX is almost entirely funded by the city’s transient room tax, an 8.5% levy collected on overnight accommodations inside Fayette County like its hotel and motel rooms, short-term rentals and campgrounds. The organization tracks how many of its recruitment efforts, including its spending, result in overnight stays and bookings at the city’s convention center.
The money visitors spend goes back to the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau so it can attend tourism and travel tradeshows, usually out-of-state, where staff show off what Lexington has to offer with those looking to host a meeting, sporting event or professional conference.
The money is also spent to host large, bi-annual tours where travel advisors, meeting planners and more are ushered around Lexington in a visit the bureau hopes will woo them enough to pick the city as its destination.
Where does VisitLEX’s money come from?
Transient room tax revenue made up roughly 84% of the agency’s fiscal year 2025 budget, meaning most of the agency’s money comes from people outside Lexington who are visiting the city.
An additional 1% statewide transient room tax is also collected from guests, though revenue from that tax is used by the state’s Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet. VisitLEX does see some of that money: the cabinet disbursed just over $204,000 to VisitLEX in fiscal year 2025.
VisitLEX has not asked for general fund dollars from Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government. However, both city and state governments awarded VisitLEX over $10 million in funds it received from the American Rescue Plan Act.
Lexington gave $1 million of its $121 million total to the agency, while the state gave approximately $9 million across several grants.
The transient room tax the city collects is split almost evenly between two uses. About 4.5% goes to pay debt on the Central Bank Center redevelopment — a $275 million expansion project — while 4% goes to VisitLEX.
Without the transient room tax — and some of the work VisitLEX does to keep visitors coming, to keep the convention center booked — the burden to pay for debt retirement on the building would fall to residents, Ramer said. Taxpaying Fayette County households are saving approximately $535 annually in taxes by virtue of what a visitor spends when they come to town, she said.
How else VisitLEX uses its money
The organization, which has almost $13.2 million in appropriations for fiscal year 2026, according to documents submitted by VisitLEX to the state, uses the money in a variety of ways to market and sell Lexington.
The agency allocated $6.9 million for promotion and advertising in its fiscal year 2025 budget, and over $3.3 million was spent on personnel.
As part of its sales and marketing efforts, the organization went to 30 tradeshows outside of Lexington in 2025 to promote the city, which produced 68,000 room nights in future business, Ramer said at the start of the new year. Marci Krueger-Sidebottom, VisitLEX’s vice president of sales, said the group tracks everything to see what works and what doesn’t, and if attendance at a show isn’t generating business, then the bureau puts its time and money elsewhere.
But it continues to rely on hosting meeting planners in Lexington to generate overnight room and convention center bookings.
“We really have to lean in and win on the customer service, on the fact that we are going to make you feel like you’re the only group in town,” Ramer said. “We are going to have this frontline staff that is going to blow you away with their accommodating spirit and can-do sort of attitude.”
According to three years of VisitLEX’s credit card statements obtained by the Herald-Leader via public records requests, that kind of approach often comes at a price. For the past three years, VisitLEX has charged an average of about $1.18 million annually across multiple cards.
From 2023-2025, the most expensive charge was for Nimlok Kentucky, a Louisville-based business that prints custom tradeshow displays and exhibits.
Spikes in spending appear in all three years of statements around April and October, when VisitLEX hosts meeting planners and other travel professionals in Lexington. Those visits are meant to coincide with Keeneland’s spring and fall meets.
Also in all three years of statements are high-dollar, recurring charges to local law and accounting firms, software companies and even to The Lane Report, a statewide business magazine. Most of the other significant charges are to various airlines, hotels across the country, rideshare companies and repeat charges to Gold Shield Transportation, a Lexington-based limousine service.
In 2025 — the only year of statements in which VisitLEX categorized its spending by type — the bureau charged approximately $43,700 to various airlines throughout the year. That is on par with how much it spent in 2024 and in 2023, when it charged approximately $53,600 and $45,000.
That same year, VisitLEX paid more than $113,760 to local restaurants including Carson’s Food & Drink, Epping’s on Eastside, ItalX, Mileta, Nic & Norman’s, Zim’s Cafe and others. The most expensive dining spend was more than $38,840 for 3Levy LLC, a catering company. The second-highest charge, $12,625, was also for 3Levy. The third most expensive, $2,400, was spent at West Sixth Brewing.
VisitLEX spent approximately $34,170 in 2025 on transactions to Gold Shield Transportation. It also spent more than $131,910 in transactions to Nimlok and spent another $39,000 with Lynn Imaging, a Lexington print shop.
The bureau’s credit card statements show last year, it spent $18,410 on various charges to or at Keeneland.
According to the three-year spending history, VisitLEX paid about $29,700 to Goldshield, nearly $170,000 to Nimlok and roughly $8,600 for Keeneland-related business in 2023. That year, the most expensive dining charge was $1,840 at Dudley’s on Short.
The spending history does show 2024 was an expensive year for the bureau.
It spent $49,530 with Goldshield. It also spent more than $196,200 with Nimlok and more than $49,500 with Lynn Imaging. That year, VisitLEX spent $19,600 on Keeneland expenses. In 2024, the most expensive dining-related charge was $11,500 for 3Levy, followed by two separate $9,975 charges at Old Kentucky Candy.
Why VisitLEX makes these investments
VisitLEX says it has a track record of increasing Lexington’s tourism while itself putting more money in the local economy.
About 45% of leads or business opportunities VisitLEX generates turn into real bookings, the bureau’s Vice President of Sales and Services Marci Krueger-Sidebottom told the Herald-Leader.
At tradeshows, VisitLEX staff sit down individually with meeting planners and discuss logistics of a conference, sporting event or other gathering: how many days it would be and how many people would attend. VisitLEX staff present what Lexington has to offer, including the specifications to meet demand, but there’s also a pitch for additional leisure activities attendees could participate in.
The number increases to 75%, she said, when the bureau has the chance to bring a lead to Lexington for a tour of the city — what VisitLEX calls a “familiarization tour.”
The bureau has one of the highest closure rates among similar organizations operating around the state, said Ramer, and seeing it increase when the product is put in front of a buyer is a nod to the work she and her team do.
The bureau awards its staff when they successfully market the city’s convention center, hotels, restaurants, parks, horse attractions and bourbon culture as one package for meeting planners and leisure travelers. VisitLEX offers bonuses for meeting certain tourism goals, and the agency says that helps keep a good pay scale in a competitive industry where employees are recruited not just from other tourism bereaus, but sales and marketing fields in general.
Those goals are set by individual employees and their supervisors and are typically for how many room nights they can successfully book for visitors and how many leads they can close.
Salaried employees continue to have their pay increased year-over-year, according to pay rate documents obtained by the Herald-Leader through an open records request. No VisitLEX salaried employee makes less than $65,000. In 2024, pay stubs increased by roughly $217,500 to more than $2.1 million — or more than 11% — compared to the previous year. Between 2024 and 2025, salaries increased less, by almost 8% to $2.2 million.
Ramer, the highest-paid employee at the agency, got a pay raise from $282,536 to $290,000 in 2025, according to documents from the agency. She also got the biggest incentive in the agency in 2025: $58,000.
Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau Board of Directors Chair Tom Harris said when he took on the role, the board conducted a compensation survey and determined salaries ought to be kept under 35% of the group’s budget, which is inclusive of pay, incentives and benefits.
Aside from making an attempt to protect the bureau’s future by ensuring it remains competitive with salary bases, the nine-member board acts as an oversight and governing body. Ramer reports to the board, some of which is appointed by Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton, but she and her staff are not city employees.
“I’m looking to the board to say, ‘You set the overall strategic direction, you set the financial accountability.’ They have a responsibility to make sure we’re doing our due diligence in transparency,” she said.
VisitLEX has pushed for a new hotel fee, in partnership with large hotel owners in Lexington, that would look to bring more conventions to the city.
The money collected in the 2% fee for visitors who book rooms in Lexington would be managed by a new public-private partnership tasked with marketing the city as a destination for conventions, meetings and other large-group business.
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