Four stories underground, Queen Bee Cabaret took the stage at Ghost Baby bar in Cincinnati. Now a full-service speakeasy with intimate table lighting and chandeliers overhead, the space was once used as an underground tunnel to refrigerate barrels of beer as far back as the 1850s.
Queen Bee Cabaret, an ensemble of burlesque dancers in the city, performed to the tune of Amy Winehouse-style vocals from the band’s lead singer. From Jazz to modern-day pop, the group closed the night with “Man I Need” by Grammy Award-winning artist Olivia Dean.
Where the roots of the city’s history meet 40 feet underground, I found myself surrounded by modern-day entertainment.
Cincinnati, Ohio, is acclaimed for its location in the heart of the Midwest, but the city’s offerings for meetings and groups are at the heart of so much more. Cincinnati is a hub for culture, history and F&B, and is also at the forefront of immersive event design with the recent debut of the Mercantile Immersive. The 550-person venue offers guests a cinematic experience with its more than 14,000 floor-to-ceiling LED panels—second only to Las Vegas’ Sphere.
The newly renovated Cincinnati Convention Center is drawing groups to the city. And when they arrive in town, they’re sure to connect with Cincy on a deeper level.
“I want people to know that we are a city that is not cookie cutter,” said Eileen Osborne, senior communications manager at Visit Cincy. “This city is someplace where you’re going to find art, you’re going to find culture. You’re going to find architecture. You’re going to find so much beauty in our city that I think a lot of people will be surprised.”
Conventions, Meetings and More
On January 7, the Cincinnati Convention Center hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony following the 18-month, $264 million transformation. Redfest was the inaugural event hosted January 16-17. The community event, which celebrates Major League Baseball’s Cincinnati Reds, saw record attendance both days, bringing more than 21,000 fans through the new convention center doors.
At Visit Cincy’s annual meeting the following week, it was announced that the DMO recorded 25.9 million visitors who spent $6.5 billion in 2025. Further, group prospects for the new convention center are presently booking into 2031.
“This building reflects a strong return for public investment and a long-term commitment to Hamilton County’s future. The county is all about supporting tourism and hospitality,” said Stephanie Summerow Dumas, Hamilton County commissioner. “This is a new space for new stories, and our visitors that come will be our ambassadors.”
In a convention center that was completely reimagined, there was plenty of “new” to go around: new networking docks, new sound-dampening walls in the 30 meeting rooms, new soundproof work pods in prefunction spaces, new chairs on the second floor and a new dining concept, Craveinnati, a food stand on the exhibit show floor that is “blank” until the client decides which types of food they want at their show.
Bob Louis, director of sales at the Cincinnati Convention Center, reflected on all the new amenities. As for the old center, he said they “took it down to the studs.”
One goal of the new building was to incorporate more natural light. This intentional design detail was seen throughout the convention center, along with wood tones, green accents, local Rookwood tile and gray ceilings in the exhibit halls, which used to be black.
The three exhibit halls in the convention center total more than 192,000 square feet. The largest ballroom—Cincinnatus— offers nearly 40,000 square feet of space.
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Visit Cincy also assists in convention bookings at Sharonville Convention Center, which completed its $24 million expansion project in January 2024.
Located 15 miles north of downtown Cincinnati, Sharonville Convention Center offers more than 90,000 square feet of space and free parking. Will Nelson, sales and event manager at Sharonville Convention Center, says the facility’s team prides itself on providing a welcoming guest experience.
In addition to the two convention centers, Cincinnati also has three full-service hotels located in the convention district:
- Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza is an Art Deco hotel which opened in 1931, making it a National Historic Landmark. The 561-room hotel boasts 41,573 square feet of space across three themed ballrooms—representing the past, present and future—and 31 meeting rooms.
- Hyatt Regency Cincinnati, my host hotel, is located steps away from the Cincinnati Convention Center. The 491-room hotel has more than 40,000 square feet of meeting space—and the largest hotel ballroom in the city with more than 14,000 square feet. The hotel also offers the city’s only heated indoor pool with an outdoor sundeck.
- The Westin Cincinnati is a 456-room hotel that features more than 28,000 square feet of newly renovated meeting spaces—completed in 2023. Across the 17 meeting rooms, three are named after someone near and dear to Meetings Today’s heart—Vice President and Chief Content Director Tyler Davidson! In reality, the meeting rooms are named after 19th-century Cincinnati businessman Tyler Davidson, whose statue in Fountain Square can be seen from the hotel.
American Signs and Underground Tours: Cincy’s Offsite Adventures
“I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think the city was great,” said Harrison Lehn, coordinator and history tour guide at American Legacy Tours.
Lehn led a group of four tourists and me through Cincy’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, down Imagination Alley—a community park full of bright mosaic tiles and statues—and underground into the aforementioned tunnels for storing lager.
These tunnels were located throughout the city to help supply the 1,841 drinking establishments in a seven-square-mile radius during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Ultimate Queen City Underground Tour led by Lehn is just one of the tours available through American Legacy Tours. Lehn leads each tour with pride and excitement to share the city’s top spots.
Tours are available for groups of 2 to 30. Two tours are offered each day during the week. On weekends, tours run every 30 minutes beginning at 11 a.m.
At the American Sign Museum, I took a stroll down Main Street, where I was thrilled to see the original Marshall Field’s sign from the flagship storefront in Chicago—a place I frequently visited as a child.
The museum was founded in 1999 and covers more than 100 years of American sign history. Its 850 full-size signs represent 40 of the 50 states, and certain spaces include signs specific to Cincinnati.
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In 2024, the museum doubled in size to 40,000 square feet. The expansion came with the addition of a group entrance and staging area to cater to the large number of private tours the museum hosts. The American Sign Museum requires a minimum of 15 guests for private group tours.
The museum also has the capacity to host private meetings and events for groups up to 350. Meetings offerings include a theater space, full-service bar and events kitchen.
One of the newest spaces added in the expansion is filled with entertainment themed signs from orchestra to dance to Duckpin bowling.
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is another offsite option for groups. The center is located near the banks of the Ohio River, which served as a barrier that separated the slave states of the South from the free states of the North.
The museum opens with a permanent exhibit, In This Place, which explores justice movements throughout history and begs the question, “What does justice mean to you?” From historic documents to Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves, the first steps of “freedom” are explained at the banks of the Ohio River. Other moving exhibits include a rebuilt Slave Pen from the 1800s and a piece of the Berlin Wall.
The museum offers full buyouts, private tours and indoor/outdoor space for meetings up to 400 guests.
Shawnee Turner, vice president of education and interpretation at The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, said that after receiving a private tour, most groups discuss the information they learn from the center that they didn’t learn in school .
“I think those are the most frequent comments we get about the space: being inspired by it, feeling a sense of awe when they’re here because of the history,” she said.
Cincinnati's Staples – Skyline Chili and Other F&B Offerings
I was seated at the bar in Skyline Chili where I took in my first “cracker bomb.” To try this Cincinnati delicacy, you poke a hole in an oyster cracker and fill it with a few drops of Skyline Chili’s hot sauce, then toss it back.
My introduction to Skyline Chili at the ripe age of 23 was no match for the first experience of my host, Eileen Osborne. A true local born and raised in Cincinnati, Osborne shared that her first solid food as a baby was Skyline’s 3-Way Chili: the chain’s signature spaghetti covered with its secret-recipe chili and topped with a pile of finely shredded Wisconsin cheddar cheese.
Aside from the city’s essential chili, groups have the opportunity to explore many different dining options in the city’s convention district.
Salazar, a new dining concept in the city, opened its doors in November 2025. The contemporary American restaurant is located a few blocks from the convention center and is available for private events.
[Related: Grand Rapids, Michigan, Is a Meetings Destination That Prizes the Arts]
Another dining option, Wildweed, features hyper-local, seasonal and foraged ingredients. The restaurant can accommodate up to 63 guests for a full buyout. The menu varies based on what ingredients are available, but I have to rave about the striped chicken tortelli and beeswax ice cream that got better with every bite.
A must-see for groups and one of my favorite stops while in the convention district was Prim, a pretty-in-pink bar that makes you feel like you’re living in Barbie’s Dreamhouse. The drink menu features beverages named after different gemstones. The “bejewled elixir” I chose was the jasper, an espresso martini-esque cocktail with banana.
At Prim, exclusivity is key. The upscale cocktail lounge also opened in November and offers full buyouts, up to 300 people, as well as customizable spaces in the back room for groups up to 150. The back room requires a reservation, and four days a week in the winter months—Thursday through Sunday—the bar has some form of entertainment in the back room—the secret showing isn’t even revealed to the bar staff until they show up for their shift. Guests can expect anything from a contortionist to a magician—but don’t let these expectations ruin the surprise!
Success at Cincy’s Findlay Market
Sam Adams’ Boston Lager came to fruition thanks to a Cincinnati native, Jim Koch. Koch brewed his family’s recipe and, in the emergence of his American craft beer, he left his Cincinnati roots behind.
I stood outside Findlay Market looking at the Samuel Adams Cincinnati Taproom as one of my hosts, Maija Zummo, senior manager, international and domestic communications at Meet NKY, staked Cincinnati's claim on the so-called Boston lager.
As we headed into Findlay Market, Ohio's oldest public market, which is celebrating 175 years in 2027, I had the opportunity to meet one of the 50 full-time merchants at the market. Kevin Foston, the owner of Makers Bakers Co., shared his success story with me. Foston and his flagship product, cheesecakes, are a byproduct of the Findlay Kitchen, a food business incubator that moves and expands business out into the city. Makers Bakers Co. started as a mobile business eight years ago when there wasn’t a spot in the market. Now, Foston greets guests with a cheeky grin from behind his counter in the market.
In the middle of telling me his success story, an older gentleman came to the counter to order a cinnamon roll, which Makers Bakers Co. serves “your roll, your way,” meaning customers choose the amount of frosting and then watch as workers hand scoop their preference onto their roll. The patron selected a moderate amount of frosting for his wife’s roll, joking that he “didn’t want to spoil her.”
Well before 10 a.m., I visited Makers Bakers Co. and walked away with bourbon caramel banana pudding, made with vanilla cake instead of cookie wafers, which really made a difference. Groups can opt for an excursion to visit Foston and taste his goodies at Findlay Market through one of the city’s food tour companies—Cincinnati Food Tours or Riverside Food Tours.
In the end, it all came back to Sam Adams’ local Cincinnati Taproom, where Foston put two bottles of “Breakfast Bock” on the counter for me to see. The cinnamon-roll-inspired brew had Makers Bakers’ logo on the front; now that’s an authentic Cincinnati beer.
