Visit Bentonville supports future events

BENTONVILLE — Visit Bentonville is giving $8,000 to help bring the inaugural Cyclist Collective eBike Festival to the city next year.

“It’s going to be the first ebike festival ever,” said Aimee Ross, Bike Bentonville’s newest director.

An ebike, meaning electric bicycle, has caused some controversy in the cycling world. Bentonville is one of only a few areas that permits off-road ebikes, Ross told the Advertising and Promotions Commission on Thursday.

The idea for a ebike festival or summit has been kicked around in the industry for a while, but then this proposal came to Bentonville, she said.

Joe Startup Education from Chapel Hill, N.C., is the organization named on the funding request application.

Organizers expect anywhere between 200 and 500 attendees for the three-day event, Ross said. The dates are to be determined but will likely be in May or June.

The $8,000 was part of $97,860 the commission doled out at its meeting Thursday to 11 events in 2019. It also approved $8,000 for two events in 2020 and $2,500 for an event in 2021.

Visit Bentonville sets aside $130,000 annually to help support events showing promise of bringing tourism dollars into the city. It has awarded $19,000 for three events next year. That with what was approved Thursday leaves $13,140 for 2019 events.

The largest amount the commission approved was $15,000, which two events — a culinary symposium and social media influencers summit — received.

The Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium will be held in June and bring in historians, culinary writers and documentary filmmakers, said Amanda Khanga, Visit Bentonville meeting and sales manager.

“Their goal is to tell the story of culinary scenes in the south,” she said.

The documentary film will be made before the event, shown at the event then housed at the Center of Study of Southern Culture, Khanga said.

Kalene Griffith, Visit Bentonville president and CEO, said the event will have a large value from the film as well as the writers who attend then publish work about Bentonville’s culinary scene.

To be selected to host the symposium is quite the honor, Khanga said.

“Food writers come in from both coasts,” she said.

The Megaphone Summit is an annual conference for bloggers, vloggers, podcasters and social media influencers. It will be held in August.

Its host, Soapbox Influence, has held the event in Fayetteville the last three years.

“We’re a Bentonville-based company. We want to see our event here,” said Bethany Stephens, with Soapbox.