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Chicago may not be up there with San Francisco or Key West as a prime destination for gay and lesbian travelers, but it more than holds its own nationally, outshining the rest of the Midwest and many other major cities, according to a survey to be unveiled Wednesday morning.
The Windy City trailed traditionally gay-friendly vacation spots on both coasts in terms of perceived goodwill toward gays and lesbians, tying for the No. 11 spot with three other cities. Still, 29 percent cited Chicago as welcoming, and among gay men the number spiked to 42 percent.
"We think that's huge; we're surprised at that," said Laura Mandala, an executive with the Travel Industry Association, which conducted the survey with Harris Interactive and Witeck-Combs Communications Inc., which specializes in the gay and lesbian consumer market.
After San Francisco and Key West, the top destinations were New York City; Fire Island, N.Y.; and Provincetown, Mass. Chicago found itself on par with San Diego, Boston and Ft. Lauderdale and way ahead of Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Nashville and Detroit.
The national online survey of 2,020 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender travelers was the Travel Industry Association's first attempt to gauge the preferences of this key market niche, which Mandala describes as "historically underserved."
"We know they are there, but have we really done anything to ensure they feel comfortable, that they have a good experience?" she said. "Some companies have, but overall we haven't really reached out to them."
Chicago and Illinois tourism officials were heartened by the survey results but are looking for more growth as well.
"I hope we can ride the wave of the Gay Games," said Jan Kostner, deputy director of the Illinois Bureau of Tourism, referring to the July event that drew thousands to Chicago.
On an ongoing basis, the city offers Gay Chicago Greeter Tours, which are free, customized walking tours, as well as the annual Gay Pride Parade and the Northalsted Market Days, noted Dorothy Coyle, director of the Chicago Office of Tourism. And its profile should be lifted further next spring with the opening of the Center on Halsted, a gay community center whose services will include distribution of visitor information, she said.
Some businesses, including Kimpton Hotels, are doing their own target marketing. In sync with the Gay Pride Parade in June, Hotel Allegro and Hotel Burnham offered special package deals. At the Hotel Allegro, for instance, the "Love Shack Romantic Getaway" offered a bottle of Moet & Chandon champagne, a bowl of strawberries and a large can of whipped cream.
In a separate survey, San Francisco-based Community Marketing Inc. estimates gays and lesbians may represent at least 5 percent of U.S. travelers and spend $55 billion a year.
The Travel Industry Association did not attempt to gauge the size of the market, but it found gay men significantly outspend straight travelers when traveling solo. That distinction generally fades when traveling with others.
It also showed certain brand preferences, with American and Southwest leading among airlines, Avis among car rentals, Atlantis among cruise lines, Hilton among hotels and Orbitz among travel Web sites.
"The companies that are doing well clearly made an effort," said Mandala. "American Airlines has a huge outreach, and the numbers show that."
from The Chicago Tribune
Next Memorial Day weekend, Cunard's behemoth liner the Queen Mary 2 will depart for a routine six- day Atlantic crossing from New York to Southampton, England, with the usual white-glove service, decadent cuisine and formal evening wear after sundown. The difference this time: Practically all the guests aboard the 2,592-passenger cruise will be gay.
It's a first for Cunard. The line signed a deal earlier this year with RSVP Vacations, a gay travel company that has chartered the ship. The agreement is one sign among many of gay cruises' progression into the mainstream of cruise travel.
Most gay-cruise operators run charter businesses, paying cruise lines to use their ships and crews. In the early days of gay cruises, about 20 years ago, that often meant working with little-known lines or securing second-tier ships.
Itineraries often included just a handful of gay-friendly destinations. But as the overall rate in the growth of passengers and spending has slowed in recent years, the cruise industry has become keenly aware of the gay travel market, estimated at $55 billion and growing.
Big spenders
Gay travelers tend to take trips more often, stay longer and spend more than other travelers, according to a survey by Community Marketing Inc., a research firm specializing in the gay travel market. Gay travelers took a median of five overnight trips in the last 12 months ended in August 2006, compared with four trips for Americans in general, and spent a median of $6,273 in travel expenses, compared with roughly $3,000 for all travelers.
To get a piece of that lucrative market, cruise companies that "really hadn't thought much about the gay and lesbian market" are now "actively recruiting and soliciting our business," said Jeff Soukup, chief executive of RSVP Vacations.
It's now common for all-gay cruises to sail to the same ports popular with most cruisers, often on the same popular ships. For the coming season, RSVP (which was acquired in March by PlanetOut Inc., a media and entertainment company that caters to gay audiences) has chartered major cruise companies' flagship vessels, including the Amsterdam of the Holland America Line and the Caribbean Princess of Princess Cruises, as well as the Queen Mary 2.
Atlantis Events, which operates tours for gay travelers, has charted Royal Caribbean's newest vessel, Freedom of the Seas - at a capacity of 3,634 passengers it is even bigger than the Queen Mary 2 - for a week-long Caribbean sailing in January; it is already sold out. And Olivia, a lesbian travel company, is offering cruise itineraries this winter to a range of destinations, both common and exotic, including the Galapagos Islands, Antarctica, Tahiti, Alaska and Amsterdam.
All of this means more options for travelers. Pat Funk, 53, a real estate broker from Cannon Beach, Ore., has been going on Olivia cruises ever since she met her partner, Dale Shafer, on one 10 years ago. Back then, she said, the ships were older and there weren't as many offerings, but each year since, "they do more exotic or upscale trips." This season, the couple plans to go the Galapagos, Antarctica and Amsterdam.
Gay travelers are interested in the same destinations as any others, said Amy Errett, the chief executive of Olivia, but they want to see those places "in community and in sort of a safe environment." Olivia inspects each ship and itinerary, sending staff members to visit ports and try out land excursions before booking any charter. It briefs crews on what to expect of a ship full of women - they tend to use lots of towels, for instance - and often takes aboard entertainers who appeal to lesbian audiences. This March, Melissa Etheridge will join Olivia's week-long Caribbean sailing.
Entertainment budget
Extra onboard parties and entertainers tend to push the price of all-gay cruises slightly above other cruise prices. For example, starting prices for indoor cabins on Princess Cruises' week-long October Mexican Riviera cruise recently were listed from $649 on princess.com. RSVP Vacations was offering a similar October Mexican Riviera cruise on the same ship, but with a host of singers, DJs and comedians, starting at $795 for early bookers.
There are still destinations that gay cruises avoid; one is Jamaica, where two gay-rights activists have been murdered in the past two years. But other destinations are becoming more welcoming.
In 2004, Sandals Resorts rescinded its ban on gay couples at its all-inclusive properties. And while a gay cruise charted by Atlantis Events was turned away from the Cayman Islands in 1997, this year 3,200 passengers on a similar cruise by the same company were greeted in the Caymans with rainbow-patterned welcome signs in some shop windows.
A larger, more open presence of gay passengers is also showing itself on cruises not pitched to gay travelers. The New York-based Pied Piper Travel, which caters to gay groups, booked about 430 gay passengers to the Caribbean the week after Thanksgiving last year - the company's most popular trip. This year, 600 gay travelers have already signed up for the same cruise, filling nearly a quarter of the ship, Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas.
And conventional cruise lines have begun to offer welcome parties for gay travelers, dubbed Friends of Dorothy - a slang term used among some gays to describe themselves.
Fellow passengers aren't always as friendly. Online postings in the Gay and Lesbian Cruisers forum at Cruise critic.com describe experiences ranging from easy mixing with other passengers to homophobic incidents. A Seabourn passenger using the screen name "inthesurf" said in a February 2006 posting that at an on-deck barbecue, a passenger hurled anti-gay slurs and a glass of water at her and her partner. "We were horrified, and reduced to tears in front of Seabourn staff and passengers," she wrote.
Cruise lines and gay travelers alike, however, say incidents like this are rare. And as gay cruises continue to join the mainstream, more mixing leads to even more openness.
In fact, gay cruises have become so popular that a reverse phenomenon is starting to emerge. "We're finding a lot of gay travelers have straight friends who want to be a part of this," said Tom de Rose, owner of Friends of Dorothy Travel in San Francisco.
from The Denver Post
Dallas' efforts to tap into the gay and lesbian travel market appear to be paying off.
The city, which launched a niche marketing campaign two years ago, has attracted more than 20 meetings and conventions and raised awareness among travelers.
"We've come a long way in a short time, and we have some momentum going," said Phillip Jones, chief executive of the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau.
In a survey by Community Marketing Inc. of more than 6,300 gay and lesbian travelers, about 14 percent said they had visited Dallas in the last year, up from 9 percent a year earlier.
The gay and lesbian market has become particularly attractive for tourism marketers in recent years because its members take more trips and spend more than the average traveler. Gay and lesbian travelers take an average of five trips a year, compared with about three trips for the typical U.S. traveler. Spending is also significantly higher, with gay and lesbian travelers spending $6,273 a year on trips, compared with about $2,955 for other travelers.
The city tied with San Diego as the seventh most popular destination for business trips among gay and lesbian travelers.
"Travel is considered to be a right to ... [the gay and lesbian market] rather than a luxury," said Jerry McHugh, manager of market research and development for Community Marketing Inc. in San Francisco.
Mr. Jones said targeting the segment simply makes economic sense, pointing to research by Witeck-Combs Communications and Harris Interactive that the roughly 16 million adult gay consumers in the United States represent $641 billion in buying power.
"The gay market is very loyal," Mr. Jones said. "If there's a perception that you're reaching out to them, then they'll reward you with their business."
Dallas' marketing effort is relatively small. The bureau spends about $50,000 annually marketing to the niche group – less than a third of what it spends courting Latino and African-American visitors.
The city launched a niche Web site aimed at gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender travelers in January, to round out marketing efforts aimed at other key tourism groups.
Dallas has also worked with the local gay community, which is the sixth-largest in the nation.
Steve Jolly, a local marketer who works for the Dallas visitors bureau, said the efforts have helped events like Halloween and Gay Pride week, attracting complementary events that encourage visitors to extend their trips.
Mostly, the bureau has relied on public relations efforts. When travel writers or meeting planners are in town, the bureau tries to have them meet with city leaders, including Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez, who is a lesbian.
"It blows them away when they see for themselves what a diverse, progressive and inviting city this is," Mr. Jones said.
The city's appeals won over the Washington-based Family Pride Coalition. The gay family advocacy group conducted its national conference in Dallas last month after the bureau made a presentation at the organization's office.
Though some members were initially reluctant to bring their meeting to Texas – where a gay-marriage ban passed with 76 percent support last year – Dallas was chosen over Minneapolis and Chicago, said the group's executive director Jennifer Chrisler.
"There's a very large and vibrant gay parenting community in Dallas and an even larger gay and lesbian community in Texas – that coupled with the fact that Texas is a place where there is still a lot of work to be done to educate people about gays and lesbians and what their lives are like, what their families are like," she said. "It really made Dallas the right choice at the right time."
With about 250 people attending, Mr. Jones said winning the Family Pride conference was the bureau's biggest success so far. The weekend drew rave reviews.
"I think it was an extraordinarily positive experience in that most of the participants found Dallas to be a warm, receptive inviting place for them," Ms. Chrisler said.
from The Dallas Morning News
Greater Phoenix can expect a 79 percent increase in gay and lesbian visitors in the coming year, according to The 11th Annual Gay & Lesbian Travel Survey, conducted by Community Marketing Inc.
One of the questions posed by the survey was, "What destinations would you be likely to visit in the coming year?" Based on answers from more than 6,700 respondents, greater Phoenix showed an expected travel increase of 79 percent for the next year. Only New Orleans, on the rebound after Hurricane Katrina, showed a greater jump.
Douglas MacKenzie, director of Communications for the Greater Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau, said he was not surprised by the survey results. The CVB began actively courting the gay and lesbian market last year. Working closely with the city's Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, the CVB created advertising campaigns for Passport magazine and sent representatives to both the National Lesbian Gay Journalist Association Conference in Miami and the Community Marketing International Conference on Gay & Lesbian Tourism.
Survey respondents who traveled last year spent an average of 29 nights away from home, and 76 percent said in the future they were more likely to choose to travel to destinations that are known for being gay-friendly. The median respondent had a household income of $79,000 and spent about $6,300 on travel last year. And 40 percent of those surveyed indicated they would increase spending on leisure travel next year, versus only 11 percent who said they expected to reduce spending.
from The Phoenix Business Journal
