June 23, 2026
Orlando knows how to summon wonder.
For decades, that wonder has drawn people from around the world — families chasing thrills, convention-goers crossing hotel lobbies, visitors arriving with itineraries already mapped. But at Visit Orlando’s Power Lunch for Members on Tuesday, June 23, the conversation turned toward another force shaping the region’s future: cultural tourism.
Because Orlando is not only a place people visit.
It is a place people create.
Held at the Citrus Club in downtown Orlando, the luncheon brought together Visit Orlando members, tourism professionals, hospitality leaders, arts advocates, and community partners for a discussion on how arts and culture help position Orlando as a vibrant creative destination. At the center of the conversation was a growing collaboration between Visit Orlando and United Arts of Central Florida — one designed to connect the region’s creative community with the tourism industry in stronger, more visible, and more practical ways.
The panel featured Kathy Brown, Vice President of Marketing at Visit Orlando; Jasmin Hough, Marketing Senior Manager at Visit Orlando; Nate Shelton, Content Senior Manager at Visit Orlando; and Vianka Rivera, Cultural Tourism Manager at United Arts.
Together, the panelists explored how Orlando’s story continues to expand beyond its best-known attractions. It is a story told in theaters and museums, in galleries and music venues, in festivals that turn streets into gathering places, in murals that change the mood of a neighborhood, and in the artists who give Central Florida its pulse.
During the conversation, Rivera shared how United Arts’ Cultural Tourism Initiative is helping raise awareness of Orlando’s cultural offerings while creating more opportunities for local arts and culture organizations to reach new audiences. The work is both creative and practical: help visitors discover more of the region, help tourism partners tell a fuller story of Orlando, and help artists and organizations benefit from the attention that tourism can bring.
A key part of that work is ArtsInOrlando.com, United Arts’ arts and culture destination guide. The platform helps residents and visitors find performances, exhibitions, festivals, museums, art tours, accessibility information, and cultural experiences throughout Central Florida. For hospitality and tourism partners, it serves as a direct line to the real Orlando — the one that lives beyond the itinerary and inside the community itself.
The panel also highlighted United Arts’ seasonal cultural tourism campaigns, including Festival Mode, Spring Into the Arts, and other live & local music seasons. Each campaign helps gather the region’s creative energy into a clear story that travelers, hotel teams, event planners, and tourism partners can discover, share, and act on.
Rivera also spoke about the Artist Directory, a free resource available through ArtsInOrlando.com that connects hotels, venues, destination management companies, and event planners with Central Florida artists, musicians, performers, makers, and creative professionals available for hire.
Education is another important piece of the initiative. Through United Arts’ free Cultural Concierge Course, hospitality and tourism professionals can learn how to recommend arts and culture experiences based on a visitor’s interests, budget, accessibility needs, and travel goals. The course helps industry professionals become trusted local guides while opening more doors between visitors and the creative life of the region.
Throughout the event, one message came through clearly: cultural tourism is not a side note to Orlando’s story. It is one of the engines that can make that story deeper, richer, and more human.
When visitors discover Central Florida’s creative community, they discover more than something to do. They discover the people, places, and stories that make this region home.
They find the Orlando that sings, paints, performs, teaches, builds, gathers, remembers, and imagines.
That is cultural tourism at its best.
That is how we make art possible.
