Tourist News

Tourist News is Orlando Citizen’s desk for the visitor economy — covered by Claire Donovan — written for the people who live here, not the people who fly in.

Orlando welcomed a record 76.7 million visitors in 2025. That economy pays wages, fills the airport, funds venues through the tourist tax, and clogs the roads residents drive. This desk covers all of it from the resident side: jobs, taxes, traffic, wages and growth. If a story only matters to visitors — which ride to ride, which ticket to buy — it belongs to our Tourism Guide and to ParksWiki, not here. If it changes what a resident earns, pays, or sits in, it belongs here.

What we watch

Official sources, checked on a standing cadence: the Disney, Universal and SeaWorld newsrooms; Visit Orlando; the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority (airport releases and monthly passenger data); Orange County hotel occupancy and Tourist Development Tax reporting; the Orange County Convention Center; and attractions openings, closures and pricing that move local jobs.

Latest tourist-economy coverage

IAAPA Expo Orlando 2026: Largest Show in Its History Brings 1,350 Exhibitors to the Convention Center — a full-campus week on the I-Drive corridor, and what it means for traffic, hotel nights and hospitality work.

SeaWorld Orlando’s Parent Reports Attendance Down 4.7% in Q3 as International Visits Fall — company-wide figures only (the company publishes no Orlando breakout); the international softness is the same headwind in the region’s visitor data.

Orlando Airport Small Business Program: GOAA Widens Access After a Year of Expansion at MCO — who gets to bid for the airport economy, plus new Terminal C gates and 8,000 planned parking spaces.

Orange County Tourist Tax: Commissioners Approve More Than $780 Million in Visitor-Funded Projects — what the 6% hotel tax will build, and why none of it can pave a road.

Orlando International Airport Passenger Numbers: 4.38 Million Flew Through MCO in August — the airport authority’s own monthly count, and what it means for jobs and traffic.

All Tourist News stories, newest first: the Tourist News archive.