The Greene County Tourist Promotion Agency’s event calendar for 2022 is available on the agency’s website: visitgreene.org. 

According to JoAnne Marshall, director of the Greene County Tourist Promotion Agency, there are at least two new events coming to the county this year.

The first is Greene County United Way’s “food fight,” a contest between local chefs and restaurants to see who can create the best dish. According to the event webpage, each entry will be videoed and put on social media, and judges will evaluate the entries. The winners will advance to the “Best of the Best Competition Dinner,” where attendees will taste and judge the dishes prepared. The first videos will be published on March 31.

The second event is called “Tribute to Heroes” and will take place in late October.

“We are bringing in the tribute to heroes event that will honor and recognize those military veterans and first responders through a range of exhibits and activities over a four-day period,” Marshall said.

According to Marshall, the tourist promotion agency is responsible for coordinating with event organizers and focuses on marketing them.

“They get the information to us and we generate our event calendar as probably the first step, and from there we go on to planning our own calendar just like any other marketing firm or advertising company,” she said. “We focus on the larger events and tie in the smaller events throughout the marketing process with social media, digital, print, and radio.”

In addition to working on this year’s event calendar, Marshall said that she is also looking ahead to next year and is working with the state to plan for 2023. She said events play a large role in attracting tourism to Greene County.

“It’s highly significant, the majority of our tourists do come for an event, a specific event, and they find out we have other events or other activities going on,” she said.

Popular events like the Rain Day Festival, Greene County Fair and Harvest Fest will once again be occurring this year. For a full list, visit the Greene County’s Tourist Promotion Agency’s events page here, at visitgreene.org/events.