Gay and Lesbian Tourism

2002

Adam (1993) stated that the growth of marketing activity for gay and lesbian are caused by the acceptance of public toward that particular group of people. Lesbian and gay nowadays

Annals of Tourism Research, 2007

Tourism Management, 1999

Purpose: This paper aims to offer a critical review of the existing research on the relationships between tourism and male homosexual identities and, based on a sociocultural perspective, suggestions for specific directions in future research. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis is based on a review of the literature that focuses on two independent yet intersecting topics: tourism and homosexuality and identity formation processes. Findings: Specific directions for future research are offered regarding the role that tourism plays in homosexual identity development. The proposed paths for future research include the tangible contributions of tourism to the stages of homosexual tourists' identity development and the (re)construction, negotiation and globalisation of homosexual and queer identities through tourists' cultural interactions. Two further suggested directions are the significance of tourism for non-Western homosexual tourists and tourism's impacts on local homosexual identities. Research limitations/implications: This study is based solely on the existing literature on male homosexuality and mostly on studies published in English. Originality/value: The research included a critical analysis of the commonly assumed significance of tourism in homosexual identity formation. The results provide directions for future empirical research and calls for a solid theoretical foundation that allows researchers to demonstrate, understand and explain how tourism contributes to gay and queer identities.

Tourism Management, 1998

This article is an exploratory investigation of the emergence of gay tourism. It briefly reviews the emergence of the gay consumer and discusses the development of gay-friendly travel products and destinations. In particular, it details the development of two European gay-friendly destinations, Manchester and Amsterdam, concentrating on the role of gay events and festivals in creating a gay identity for those cities. The article's substantive contribution to the tourism literature is, however, its focus on the importance of space and place to this community. Given that public space is contested, controlled and heterosexualised, the article suggests that whilst there are significant opportunities for tourism marketers to reach out to the gay consumer, the resultant touristification of gay space may ultimately degay spaces and events and erase their essentially gay identities.

ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2003

Between Being and Looking" is a political and personal investigation of lesbian social space in Philadelphia, set within the context of mainstream promotion of queer tourism in the city. It is also part of a body of work I have been doing for the last few years, the goal of which is to develop alternative methods of generating, analyzing and communicating geographic information through a variety of accessible texts and tools of visualization drawn from geography, the arts and popular culture. Central to this effort is a desire to offer new and potent ways of telling geographic stories that emanate not so much from 'authoritative' sources such as government officials, planners, marketers, the news media and the geographic mainstream as from the populations themselves that are generally studied and represented by these authorities. Project findings include evidence that lesbians do not generally maintain the same relationship with capitalist spaces of consumption as gay males do, though queer tourism promoters have conflated lesbian tourism with gay male tourism. In a society where the presence and agency of lesbians and bisexual women are both ignored and overly generalized, "Between Being and Looking" seeks to encourage further investigation into their relationship to space and place within critical social geography and critical cartography.

2019

This study investigates the links between a destination's gay-friendliness and the travel preferences of tourists with different levels of affiliation with the LGBT community. Overseas tourists to Tel Aviv (Israel) participated in two surveys: during LGBT Pride events (n = 168) and two months later (n = 117). Due to a terror attack, the before-and-after effects of safety perceptions and gay-friendliness were also tested. Analyzing responses of tourists with different levels of affiliation with the LGBT community revealed that the ongoing inclusive policy of the city raises positive attitudes among all inbound tourists (regardless of their level of affiliation with the LGBT community) and that LGBT tourists do not spend more money than tourists who are not LGBT. Unexpected risk mitigation effects of gay-friendliness were observed, when all tourists linked gay-friendliness to safety perceptions, and perceived Tel Aviv as a safe place, even after a terror attack. This finding suggests that gay-friendliness is an asset in building resilience for urban destinations, even in unstable geo-political regions.