As Pride Month is being celebrated around the world travel metasearch service WayAway has published the results of a study that reveals that sadly LGBTQ+ communities still don’t feel safe when travelling or that they can be themselves.
The results follow a survey of 100 statistically relevant frequent travellers who identify as LGBTQ+, comparing the results with heterosexual frequent travellers.
Worryingly it seems that the average ‘safe indicator’ for LGBTQ+ travellers, at 3.5 out of 5, is far below the heterosexual average of 4.1 points.
Equally upsetting, and it would seem related to safety, is the fact that 50% said they avoid public displays of affection, whilst 30% claimed they limit the way they dress or behave in public and another 30% said they control revealing personal information.
In fact, when choosing a destination safety is the top concern for 62% of LGBTQ+ travellers.
WayAway’s Director of PR, Janis Dzenis comments: “Whilst undoubtedly enormous progress has been made over the years, as LGTBQ+ people travel to Gay Pride events all around the world this month let’s not forget that many of them sadly don’t feel safe or that they can be themselves when travelling.
“We call on the wider travel technology industry to create more innovative tools that enable LGTBQ+ travellers to both feel and actually be safe when on the move. There are apps and services out there, of course, but more could be done and often the mainstream OTAs or tour operators don’t offer much in that way. Aside from the very important moral case for this, there is also a very big economic motive too: LGTBQ+ travellers are significant in number and even more significant in their spending power – gaining their loyalty makes sense.”
To celebrate Gay Pride Month this year WayAway is featuring LGBTQ+ friendly destinations from gay-travel-bloggers Nomadic Boys and has added a dozen city guides dedicated to LGBTQ+ travellers, including San Francisco, New Orleans, Portland, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Berlin, Amsterdam, Madrid, and more.
In addition, the WayAway team has partnered with well-known queer personas to create celebrity layers for the WayAway ‘city in a nutshell’ project.
