Visit Bowling Green Ohio

In late 2025, Great Lakes Studios launched a new website for Visit Bowling Green Ohio, the destination marketing organization serving Wood County’s vibrant college town. The prior website lacked the visual impact and content depth needed to compete in an increasingly crowded digital landscape. This case study highlights the results of our collaborative redesign and the smart integrations that power it.

Industry: Non-profit / Tourism & Destination Marketing

Objective: Build a modern, content-rich digital hub that inspires visitors and reduces the staff burden of keeping the site current.

Challenges: Like many small CVBs, Visit Bowling Green Ohio operates with a lean team. Keeping events, attractions and listings accurate across multiple platforms was time-consuming and prone to gaps.

Target Audience Focus: Leisure travelers, families and sports visitors within driving distance of northwest Ohio, as well as BGSU campus visitors and prospective event attendees.

Strategies Implemented

360 Strategy: We began with an immersive discovery process: learning the Visit Bowling Green Ohio brand, their marketing goals and the pain points their staff faced daily. This foundation shaped every design and content decision that followed.

Integrations: To solve the content currency problem, we connected the new site to an external data partner, enabling an automatic sync of events calendar listings and attractions. Visitors see fresh, accurate information. We created this without any manual effort from the CVB team.

BG Buddy: We introduced a destination-specific AI chatbot named BG Buddy, giving visitors an “always-on” resource to answer questions about things to do, places to stay and local events. BG Buddy extends the team's reach without adding to their workload.

Results

Great Lakes Studios delivered a site that immediately moved the needle on organic discovery and direct visitation. Within months of launch, the new site was driving measurably more qualified traffic — from visitors who found Visit Bowling Green Ohio through search and those returning directly because the experience earned their trust.

• Organic Search traffic increased 149%

• Direct traffic increased 293%

Check out the website at VisitBGOhio.org.