Would a rainbow flag on a website convince you that a venue is LGBTQ2S+ friendly?
What if there’s no flag, but the descriptions of, say, the venue’s wedding-planning services are all gender-neutral? What if the website had a photo of the venue’s chef, who was tattooed and androgynous looking?
When it comes to finding welcoming businesses, queer and trans travellers often have to play detective, analyzing photos and parsing language. Sometimes even the aesthetics of a website or social media feed offer suggestions about whether the desk staff will scoff (or worse) when two same-sex guests request a single queen-sized bed.
In various corners of the hospitality industry, some companies and destinations have been working on making things more inclusive. But standards and attitudes vary wildly, informed by company mandates, local culture and local laws. For example, does the region you’re hoping to visit prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression or not?
“Of course, some businesses want to welcome LGBTQ+ customers, but the idea should be to go a bit further, looking at the specific concerns and needs of LGBTQ+ clients,” says Ed Salvato, a queer and trans travel expert and hospitality marketing consultant who co-authored the book Handbook of LGBT Tourism and Hospitality: A Guide for Business Practice. “Sometimes suppliers will say, ‘Why do we need to treat them special? We treat everyone the same. We welcome everyone.’ But when I hear that, I think they just don’t see me and they don’t know what happens when I travel.”
This spring Salvato took part in Proud Experiences, a conference focused on bringing together leaders in the travel and lifestyle sector to improve understanding of LGBTQ+ customers and develop business strategies to make them feel more welcome. Though there have been many improvements over the decades since Salvato has been in the industry, they’ve often mostly benefited gay white men and others who feel they have the privilege to speak up and make demands. “But imagine straying outside that paradigm, so you have, say, a masculine-presenting woman, or a non-binary person or two of them. It gets very klutzy very quickly,” he says.
Many of the efforts made by major players like hotel chains and tour companies happen behind the scenes, out of the view of travellers, in the form of training and policies. But even if management knows the importance of not misgendering guests or not making assumptions about who is related to whom and how, this doesn’t always trickle down to frontline staff who are often poorly paid and left out of policy discussions. Ironically, at the top end of the market, where frontline staff do receive more training, what’s considered courteous service has been, in the past, more stereotypically gendered: staff need to be untaught that the man gets the bill, the woman is helped with her jacket, that the room should be supplied with a shoehorn for men, a makeup kit for women.
Salvato says that a welcoming business should start by auditing its website, social feeds, public statements, contracts and other documents to avoid gendered language and stereotypes in favour of language that is more intentional. Phrases like “Fellow fliers” and “Dear guests” not only avoid the assumptions about gender and orientation that are conjured by phrases like “Ladies and gentlemen,” but are more specific about the intended reader or listener. He admits that other changes, like gender-neutral washrooms in the hotel lobby, may cost more if they involve renovations.
A few years ago, there had been a trend of larger hospitality chains creating microsites for LGBTQ2S+ travellers: someone planning a trip or event could Google their way to a page that included references to same-sex weddings and images of queer couples. Because those microsites often weren’t connected to the main site, they felt like ghettoization: we’ll whisper to you that we’re welcoming, but we don’t want the straight guests to know. Salvato says the current trend is to ensure that all the services, offers and features are there for everyone to see and that all the imagery, if it’s of people, represents diversity in race, gender, gender expression and orientation. Marketing by destinations like San Francisco, Fort Lauderdale, Puerto Rico, New York and Toronto, for example, will mix LGBTQ2S+-themed recommendations with other “must dos for everyone.” “You want to see them casually mention it’s lesbian-owned or there’s a trans sommelier because it’s an interesting little factoid for anybody,” says Salvato. “We’ve really had enough of the Pride cocktail.”
While integrating Pride rainbow imagery into a brand is rarely a bad thing—a business can’t be that homophobic and transphobic, can it, if someone on staff decided to to display the Progress flag?—Salvato says savvy customers, especially younger ones, want to see that it’s used as an entrypoint to something more substantial the company is doing. A rainbow flag image could be linked to the business’s support of a queer and trans charity or community group.
There have been some efforts toward creating certification systems that give LGBTQ2S+ travellers the confidence that they’ll be treated right. The International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA) recently launched IGLTA Certified, where businesses and institutions that apply must meet eight criteria (including anti-discrimination policies, demonstrated support of the community and inclusive marketing) before receiving the IGLTA stamp of approval. The Canadian Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce has also launched a similar Rainbow Registered program, which includes the hospitality sector among others. Because these are new services, it’s hard to say how helpful they’ll be, but the opt-in approach should be a strong signal that the properties are making an effort to be inclusive.
The online booking service Booking.com provides properties with tools and incentives to be LGBTQ+ inclusive, and allows users to apply a Travel Proud filter to find properties that designate themselves as LGBTQ2S+-welcoming. Hotels.com also allows properties to designate themselves as welcoming, though neither service automatically shows the filter among the many displayed on their search pages. For both, you have to Google something like “lgbtq hotels” to get to a site page with the activated search capability; it’s still very discreet.
For smaller businesses, the clues might be more subtle. The “about us” description of a bed and breakfast might tell the tale of how hosts Gustavo and Richard met, while the photo of coffee shop proprietors Stephanie and Janine let us know how cool the duo are. These businesses may not be targeting the LGBTQ2S+ market—and may be located in very straight places—but their openness allows their community to find them and support their enterprise.
“Sometimes you just look at the design of something and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, amazing, it feels like there’s a gay touch,” says Salvato. “I love it when you look at the staff photos and there’s gender-non-conforming people doing their thing—they don’t need to use the rainbow.”
