Work / KENTUCKY HUG

Kentucky Hug

A centralized marketplace and booking platform offering a new way to book bourbon experiences.

Kentucky Hug was founded by Eddie Fieldhouse, a veteran in the bourbon tourism industry with over a decade of experience via Pegasus Transportation.

Recognizing the inadequacies of existing booking systems and the frustration of tourists coming to the state, Eddie wanted to bring his idea of a centralized marketplace to life. This platform would be used both by travelers and the distilleries. After speaking with 17 other tech companies, none of which aligned culturally and structurally, Eddie found a natural fit at Slingshot. Slingshot transformed this concept into a live product in less than a year, marking the start of an exciting journey for the Kentucky Hug.

Challenges

Consumers spend hours on multiple websites to book multi-stop bourbon tours.

For a smooth experience, visitors would spend a lot of money with tour companies to plan their trips.

Existing booking systems failed to collect data on all ticket holders, limiting distillers' knowledge of customers.

Visitors were frustrated by the inability to find critical details on distillery amenities consistently.

Solutions

Centralized the purchase of bourbon experience tickets into a single marketplace.

Created a self-serve itinerary builder that allowed visitors to plan multi-day trips by themselves.

Built an interface to encourage input of all traveler data, including check-in reminders for all guests.

Multi-distillery searches on the marketplace consistently show amenity and key distillery information.

Hitting The Target

The Kentucky Hug successfully launched its marketplace on August 1st, 2023, offering the public an intuitive interface to book bourbon experiences all in one place. As of November 2023, the comprehensive ticketing system for distilleries was also released, allowing distilleries to provide online booking directly from their website and the kyhug.com marketplace. Ready to find your own bourbon experience? Visit kyhug.com now!

Client Review

Slingshot understood our unique vision.

★★★★★

It was clear they had a high level of expertise. They came up with a solution that fit our needs, and we felt involved during the entire process. We plan on working with Slingshot again, and see them as partners rather than another software vendor.

Maria Doe CEO & Co-Founder

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