It doesn’t matter if you’re a Gemini, a Scorpio or even if you’ve got a moon rising. That’s not going to help you find your tribe when you’re on the road.
We’ve devised a new system for dividing guys by gay travel tribe, depending on their passions. Here are the descriptions of who belongs to which tribe, along with suggestions for destinations where each tribe should feel most at home.
Newbie Gaycationer
You’ve travelled with your parents, you’ve destination-weddinged for your friends’ nuptials, you’ve backpacked with your favourite gal pal. Now it’s time to fully immerse yourself in what they used to call “the gay lifestyle” and try a vacation that’s more about the nightlife and meeting fellow gays than celebrating people you already know. You’re going solo for the first time and you want to get laid, yet you’re not quite ready for a full week of debauchery (a night or two is fine) or wrangling too many logistics on your own.
Your destination
You can tell your parents you’re going to Montreal, Canada, for the museums and cuisine, when really you’re trying to summon the courage to tour its gay saunas. The popular cinq-a-sept happy hours will help take the edge off all the hedonistic new experiences you’re about to have. The Gay Village is big enough for you to spend your whole weekend in, but not big enough to get lost. Although the official language is French, your English will get you where you need to go. Start at Le Stud (1812 St. Catherine St. E., Montreal), which is dark without being sleazy, then discover your inner slut at Sauna G.I. Joe (1166 St. Catherine St. E., Montreal).
Gang Hanger
You have so many gay friends in your life you spend half your time managing your WhatsApp group chats. You never want to leave anybody out, so your posse keeps growing and growing. When you’re at a hotel, you claim the biggest table each morning at the breakfast buffet. Airbnb has saved your life since you can’t imagine needing fewer than five bedrooms. Travelling with you is like joining a sports team.
Your destination
Pick a Palm Springs, California, resort at your preferred level of spiciness. Your gang could do a takeover of the elegant 24-room Santiago Resort (650 E. San Lorenzo Rd., Palm Springs), or get a little wild with other guests at the large CCBC Resort Hotel (68-300 Gay Resort Dr., Cathedral City). You’re comfortable being naked with friends, no?
Cocktail Chaser
You can’t understand why anyone would order beer when they can quench their thirst with a melange of bitters, simple syrup, Triple sec and fresh basil leaves. You’ll endure a three-hour drag show if it means being served by the city’s top mixologist. You’ll even put up with straight people if the hottest bar of the moment isn’t dedicated to queers.
Your destination
Barcelona, Spain, has an amazing array of watering holes; you could spend a week bar hopping and you wouldn’t scratch the surface. Put on your flashiest shirt and pull up a stool at La Federica (Carrer de Salvà 3, Sants-Montjuïc, Barcelona), which is a show bar that also knows shaken from stirred.
Music Maven
You roll your eyes when someone calls jungle music circuit or mistakes nu-disco for house. You don’t care how big or small a bar is, or even if it’s in the ’burbs. All that matters is that the DJ is killing it—and the quality of the sound system. You’ll plan your whole quarter around this year’s hottest music festival and you know all the ticketing apps that will get you there.
Your destinations
The electronic music festival Tomorrowland (July 18 to July 27, 2025) takes place at an amusement park outside of Antwerp, Belgium. The cool kids, queer and straight, love it. For a more gay-focused dance frenzy, Arena is a series of six circuit-style parties that take place in Playa del Carmen, Mexico (January/February 2026, dates TBA).
La Naturalista
Whether you’re in the woods, by a pool, on a beach, in a pack of people or all by your lonesome, you have only one criteria for a great vacation: Can you be naked? You don’t want anybody to judge you by your junk, but you don’t mind talking about it all day. You get annoyed when you see guys on the beach wearing bathing suits that don’t hide anything, but they’re something to talk about besides being naked.
Your destination
Mykonos, Greece, has some of the most famous gay nude beaches in the world. Elia is the largest and perhaps the most popular, but Super Paradise is home to the delightful beach club Jackie O’s.
Bear Buddy
Big-bellied hairy guys have a built-in radar for finding each other. They start by looking for the backwards ball caps, then check that the beverage of choice is beer. Easygoing up to a point, bear buddies also like to dance and get frisky. The scene is so chill, even non-bears follow bear migration patterns.
Your destinations
Provincetown, Massachusetts’s Bear Week (July 13 to 20, 2025), and Sitges, Spain’s, Bear Sitges Week (September 5 to 14) are the two biggest bear weeks in the world. But Puerto Vallarta, Mexico’s Beef Dip (January 25 to February 1, 2026) gives them both a run for their money…and it’s a winter escape.
Fetish Fancier
You may have a preference for puppy masks or harnesses or whips or fisting or rubber or watersports, but you’d rather be around one of your least-favourite kinks than be at a venue where there were none. You have a selection of harnesses and jockstraps you take with you on every trip, and a good explanation prepared just in case immigration agents ask you about the other items in your suitcase.
Your destination
Berlin has one of the world’s biggest gay leather communities, and lots of sex-positive venues for fantasy scenes to unfold. So many of the city’s gay bars have dark rooms, but for something more specialized, try one of the themed nights at Lab.oratory (Am Wriezener bhf, Berlin, it has its own entrance on the ground floor of Berghain nightclub).
Beach Bum
If you don’t finish the day a little red and with sand between your toes, it’s not a vacation. Your collection of Speedos is enormous and your appetite for seafood is boundless. A perfect day means a walk from the hammock to the ocean, up the beach to a beachside bar, down the beach to catch the sunset, back to the hotel for dinner, then finishing back at the beach with a moonlight stroll. Repeat for as many days as your vacation lasts.
Your destination
LGBTQ+-friendly Cuba is full of seaside resorts at various price points, but there’s only one that caters primarily to queer guests. That’s Gran Mutu Rainbow Hotel (Cayo Guillermo, Cuba). Its all-inclusive offerings include drag shows.
Bro Adventurer
You can’t remember the last time you saw a drag show or made a special effort to visit a gay bar. You’d rather be biking or hiking or paddling or rock climbing than sitting around talking about Beyoncé and Taylor Swift or Gucci or Prada. You have more pairs of boots than you do jockstraps, though you do like to haul out your wrestling singlet from time to time. Nothing turns you on more than sex in a tent or in the woods.
Your destination
You don’t even have to leave the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, to commune with nature—nature infiltrates every corner of the city, including the massive (and cruisy) Stanley Park. You can get to the Grouse Grind, a 300-metre ascent up Grouse Mountain, known as “Mother Nature’s Stairmaster,” by public transit—that’s how close nature is to the city.
Culture Vulture
You’ve never met a museum you didn’t want to spend a few hours in. Architecture, art, urban design and historical monuments are the biggest factors that determine which city you want to visit next. When you’re shopping, it’s always for books, art and artisanal objects, and when you go out at night, you want a venue that oozes queer history and well-considered interior design.
Your destination
Most of the major museums in London, U.K., are free, though Queer Britain (2 Granary Square, London), the LGBTQ+ museum, is 10 pounds or pay what you can. The Royal Vauxhall Tavern (372 Kennington Ln., London) has been hosting drag and alternative performances dating back to the 1940s.
Selfie Hunter
Always glued to your phone, you can post a story before your friends have finished taking the picture, edit a reel in five minutes and reply to every DM before the sender grows impatient. You miss a few sights—and walk into traffic from time to time—but your follower numbers are growing exponentially. If a tree falls in the forest and there’s not a social media post to document it, was it even a tree at all?
Your destination
One of the most progressive countries in the world when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights, Malta is covered with beautiful historic architecture and has fantastic views of the Mediterranean. When you’ve finished photographing the skyline of the capital city, Valletta, take a boat ride to the Blue Grotto complex of ocean caves.
Madly Married
Other gay people? Are there other gay people? You only have eyes for one person, your one and only. Therefore, flirting is low on the agenda. Yet you are known as the couple who can’t keep their hands off each other—to the point that you make others uncomfortable—so a queer-friendly destination remains essential (because you can’t be guaranteed you’d both be put in the same jail cell). You’re open to meeting other couples who can relate to couplehood.
Your destination
Porto, Portugal. The gay scene in this gorgeous port city is not huge; however, after a long day of walking along the Douro River holding hands, or sipping porto in one of the tasting bars across the river in Vila Nova de Gaia, you’ll find there are enough eateries, bars and clubs to keep you love birds busy until you head back to your hotel room.
