About Experience New Orleans

Born in New Orleans. Run by Locals.

ExperienceNewOrleans.com is proudly independent and entirely run by locals. It was created in 1994 as a deeply personal mission to reach out to visitors and share the authentic culture, historic architecture, family traditions, and living magic of the city we love.

In the early days of the commercial web, we were surprised by the perceptions of New Orleans we heard from so many people we met online. We were determined to share the real New Orleans — not simply the one-dimensional, adult-only portrayal of our hometown that so often appeared in national media.

We wanted everyone to know the city where we grew up — the New Orleans we’d never leave — a city with brilliant chefs, delicious Cajun and Creole food, European architecture, swamps, steamboat cruises on the Mississippi, historic plantation homes/museums open to the public, and festivals year-round celebrating everything from strawberries to oysters.

Not to mention the music — New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, and live bands and street performers serenade you as you walk down the street. Some of our most celebrated festivals include Jazz Fest and French Quarter Fest, where everyone enjoys music and food for days.

So we explored every corner of our city to bring you the New Orleans we know and love.

Growing Into a Family of New Orleans Websites

What started as a passion to defend our city’s reputation naturally evolved into a family of sites about the best of New Orleans.  Our family of New Orleans websites soon grew:

MardiGrasNewOrleans.com allowed us to show visitors the Mardi Gras that locals know and love. Covered by both online and traditional media, it featured the first live broadcast of Mardi Gras, interviews with Anne Rice and Delta Burke along the parade route, plus entertainment by Harry Connick and his dad.  We were thrilled to showcase the positive side of Mardi Gras.

NewOrleansKids.com allowed us to address visitors who believed New Orleans was not a place they could visit if they had children or were Christian. They thought the city was one block in the French Quarter, which is only a tiny part of our city.  Having raised our own families here, we knew how much there was for families to experience.

 Our promise to you:  

We don’t scrape data from corporate travel sites —  everything on our sites is personal recommendations — we never recommend a spot we haven’t personally tried, loved, and verified ourselves. 

That distinction has been important to us from the beginning.

Who We Are

Behind ExperienceNewOrleans.com is a team of local writers, hospitality professionals, tourism leaders, photographers, designers, and digital professionals with decades of firsthand New Orleans experience.

Our team includes:

• A national award-winning writer and creative director who has spent decades writing about and documenting the culture, history, music, and personality of the Gulf South.
• A former President of the Louisiana Travel Association and longtime tourism advocate with decades of experience in Louisiana hospitality, tourism, and destination marketing.
• An experienced New Orleans hotel general manager and early digital tourism marketing professional who understands the city’s hotel and hospitality industry from the inside out.
• Professional local photographers and art directors who help us capture the authentic, living heartbeat of the city—never relying on corporate stock photography.
• A founder and early New Orleans digital pioneer who began helping New Orleans hotels and local businesses establish their first websites in the earliest days of the commercial web, whose work was recognized nationally by the National Association of Women Business Owners and locally with a New Orleans CityBusiness Women of the Year nomination.

Together, we know New Orleans as locals; we understand its hospitality industry from decades of firsthand involvement, and we have been sharing the city we love online since the web itself was new.

Our Professional Affiliations

Our professional affiliations include:

• LTA — Louisiana Travel Association
• SKAL New Orleans — SKAL International
• MSWIT — Mid-South Women in Tourism
• AAF New Orleans — Advertising Club of New Orleans

Our local team manages our New Orleans websites, answers emails with questions from visitors, recommends businesses and experiences we know, and engages with a community of more than 500,000 followers through our social media channels.

Our goal is the same one we began with in 1994: to help you truly discover New Orleans — and plan a trip you’ll treasure for the rest of your life.

Who We Recommend (And Why)

The content on our site is hand-selected by our team, never scraped from automated directories or generic databases. We do not promote every business that asks to be included. Our recommendations are guided by firsthand experience, local knowledge, and our commitment to sharing places and experiences we know, trust, and believe add genuine value to your trip.

We believe the best of New Orleans should be shared with everyone. That is why we proudly feature historic landmarks, cultural attractions, nonprofit events, and traditional Mardi Gras parades free of charge.  

Businesses we recommend who choose to advertise with us help us support, maintain, and continually improve our New Orleans websites.  It does not determine who we recommend.