A City, Toured
Seeing Bourbon City through different avenues
By Malik Anderson
There are numerous ways to see a city. While satisfying the individual interests of your group may prove difficult, Louisville may have some of them covered, as well as several boutique and large-scale properties for your groups to lay their head.
The city might have a deep focus on horses and bourbon, but it goes much further than galloping steeds and brown cocktails (although those are great as well). Between watching horse races and visiting distilleries, there are plenty of things to see, activities to do and hotels to get business done.
Read More: Louisville, Kentucky: Bourbon City with a Modern Twist
Pro Tip
“In addition to the spring and fall Churchill Downs meets, attendees can experience the best of what Kentucky has to offer with a combined tour of Hermitage Farm and the Kentucky Derby Museum. Start the day out with admission to the Kentucky Derby Museum with a track tour and a chance to see The Greatest Race.
“A shuttle takes guests to Hermitage Farm for a Bourbon experience and horse tour with a return shuttle to the Kentucky Derby Museum. Hermitage Farm is just 25 minutes from downtown Louisville with an on-site garden that provides food for the farm restaurant along with an art walk.”
–Sonia Fong, Senior Vice President of Convention Development, Louisville Tourism
5 Places to Meet
Art-filled and boutique is how 21c Museum Hotel Louisville rolls. Permanent pieces, as well as temporary exhibitions, occupy the interior and exterior of the property. This includes the guest rooms, particularly the Asleep in the Cyclone room, which includes colorful triangular stained glass throughout the space, and its main restaurant, Proof on Main, turned into an exhibition in itself.
91 guest rooms, 9,000 sq. ft. of event space.
Stylistically, The Brown Hotel will take you back 100 years with its Old-World decor and ambiance. The property was built in 1923 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. While Louisville may be a city known that takes its bourbon seriously, The Brown is a hotel that does just the same. It’s one of the major properties on the city’s Urban Bourbon Trail, offering bourbon cocktails and bourbon flights.
294 guest rooms, 17 meeting venues.
Galt House Hotel, Trademark Collection by Wyndham is Louisville’s only waterfront hotel, as well as Kentucky’s largest. Smack dab in the middle of the city, Galt House is next to a lot of group-friendly action, including the museum district and Urban Bourbon Trail.
1,310 guest rooms, 130,000 sq. ft. of meeting space, 53 meeting rooms, two ballrooms.
Located in Louisville’s hip NuLu (“New Louisville”) district, Hotel Genevieve has the look to match, from the bright walls and trendy decor of its guest rooms to the stylish rooftop Bar Genevieve, the property is dressed up in eye-catching furnishings that encourage lounging.
122, guest rooms, 3,550 sq. ft. of meeting space and 24-guest private dining room.
From the moment you enter, Omni Louisville Hotel’s classic design can be seen inside and out, from its guest rooms to its F&B selections, which include Bob’s Steak & Chop House; Pin + Proof, a speakeasy with four bowling lanes; and The Water Company, a rooftop pool and bar.
612 guest rooms, 70,000 sq. ft. of meeting space.
5 Tour Experiences That’ll Make You Love Louisville
Horses. Hermitage Farm is responsible for breeding champion racehorses, and visitors to the farm will get the chance to meet its retired racehorses. Additionally, they can tour the farm’s garden and sustainability practices, followed by a picnic lunch and bourbon-tasting experience. Horse Country offers tours of horse farms all throughout Kentucky, like young Thoroughbreds at The Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, stallions at Ashford Stud in Versailles, and mares and their foals at the nursery farm Denali Stud.
Bourbon. Louisville not only takes its bourbon seriously but also its bourbon-based experiences. There are plenty of different bourbon tours for your group, including Brough Brothers Distillery Bourbon Experience, Whiskey Row Walking Tour, which includes not only sampling of some of the city’s best whiskeys but also how it all came to be. It’s not called Bourbon City for nothing.
Brews. Louisville is surrounded by breweries and you can see them all—or most, at least. The city offers several brew experiences, like the Louisville Ale Trail, which includes grabbing an Ale Trail Passport to get access to the program’s curated list of breweries; the three- or four-stop Louisville Brew Bus; and The Thirsty Pedaler, a visitation of two or three breweries on a 15-person bike.
Food. The city has plenty of food tours to go around in its many established and up-and-coming areas. Louisville Food Tours offers NuLu Food & History Tour, which takes a tour of the food scene in Louisville’s NuLu district through six distinct F&B stops, and Highlands Food, History & Architecture Tour, which runs through the Original Highlands’ liquor and cuisine scene.
Read More: Making a Tasteful Impression Through a Food and Beverage Program That’s a Cut Above
Cruise. Learn about the history of Louisville, or simply see the sights, while cruising through the Ohio River. Belle of Louisville Riverboats has a couple of options for groups. On the two-hour Picnic Lunch Cruise, groups can enjoy a feast-filled, relaxed adventure, while during Harbor History, groups will take part in a narrated, sightseeing cruise that will inform them about Louisville’s founding and the history of steamboats.
This article appears in the October/September 2023 issue. You can subscribe to the magazine here.
