Experience Kissimmee rolls out the welcome mat to its travel trade partners in Canada

DT Minich was in Toronto this week for his annual visit to Canada, touching base with industry partners, delivering a message of welcome and letting them know what Kissimmee had on offer both now, for the upcoming fall and winter season and into 2026.

Minich, the President & CEO of Experience Kissimmee, was accompanied on the visit by Experience Kissimmee’s International & Domestic Sales Manager, Kristina Lopez, and along with welcoming travel trade partners for a Celebration of a Season of Sunshine and Success event at Toronto’s Hotel X, he also took some time out of his busy schedule to sit down with Travel Press Today.

“I try to get up here at least once a year, just to touch base with all of our tour operators and our airline partners and I think this year, it’s probably more important than anything since COVID, that we’re here to show that Canada is a very important market to us,” Minich told TPT.

And he made it clear that “we will do whatever we need to do” to ensure Canadians continue to visit Kissimmee, adding: “I think it’s really important to send a message that we believe in this market and we’re going to support this market and we’ll get through this just like we got through COVID.”

While business from Canada is certainly down, Minich and his team are looking ahead to the winter season and will be “pushing the value proposition” that Kissimmee offers Canadian visitors who may be feeling pinched by the Canadian-U.S. dollar exchange rate.

Kissimmee’s abundance of vacation home properties – it has 32,000 of the purpose-built, professionally manage homes — is certainly an antidote to the exchange rate, with Minich pointing to the value of staying in a vacation home “where you don’t have to eat three meals out a day; you’ve got your own little swimming pool, so you don’t have to go and do something every day, you can just hang out at your own pool.”

He also told TPT that Kissimmee is having “a super good summer,” explaining that “I think quite a bit of it, actually, is because of the opening of Epic [Universal Studios Epic Universe] and it has been extremely successful and popular and in demand.”

Down the road, Minich told TPT that Kissimmee is set to welcome the opening of a major new hotel development in 2027.

Everest Place will feature two hotel-condo projects – a Nickolodeon Hotel and Condo and a Mysk, high-end luxury property that will be operated by Kempinski Hotels.

Also new, Kissimmee, working with Altas Obscura and Gastro Obscura, is preparing to launch a Latin Culinary Trail in 2026 that will ultimately feature 40 different restaurants all connected to an interactive map so visitors can explore the area’s Latin culinary scene.

As for the FIFA World Cup in 2026, while Orlando is not hosting any games, Miami is and Minich said that Experience Kissimmee will be promoting two-centre holidays, where visitors can come up to visit between games. Rail connections offered by Brightline will make that a simple proposition.

Bottom line, there’s lots going on in Kissimmee and from where Minich sits: “We’re hoping that we see our Canadian friends again this winter come back and visit us. We’re a very welcoming destination and it’s important to us to show that we support the Canadian market.”

Watch for more on Kissimmee in an upcoming issue of Travel Courier.