LGBT visitors will find an ideal gay travel destination in beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia. Experience Halifax Pride festival and our vibrant LGBT Halifax Community.
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Keagan Kristoff's curator insight,
December 4, 2013 11:24 PM
Equal rights for lesbian, gay, bi, and transgender (LGBT) population is hot topic in news today. With the recent gay marriage law passing in Illinois which legalizes gay marriage, I found this article about travel and its' affect on the LGBT community fitting to recent news stories. According to the World Tourism Organization and International Gay and Lesibian Travel Association, men associated with the LGBT population take an average of 3.9 trips per year where a woman takes 3.3 trips per year. Research also shows that the LGBT community spends higher than the average person while traveling and that they are highly influenced by social media, technology and word of mouth. This proves that the tourism industry must think of creative ways to market to the LGBT community. This article provided examples of two campaigns in marketing toward their target publics. First, New Zealand launched its' "Make history" campaign which promotes a competition that offers free travel, wedding, and a honeymoon to the first same-sex couple to wed in New Zealand. This competition provides free coverage to promote New Zealand as a same-sex friendly wedding and travel desitination. The logo used to promote the competition is even same-sex oriented by having bold white letters for "Choose to Make," and rainbow letters for "history." The second campaign is created by the state of New York. New York created their own campaign geared toward LGBT travelers. The governor of New York launched a LGBT tourism website that featured a calendar of LGBT events and popular destinations. In addition, the website dedicated part of the website to information about the history of New York's LGBT community. Also, the campaign logo takes the original red heart in the slogan, " I love NY" and replaces it with a rainbow heart. Finally, a promotional video was released that showed same-sex couples enjoying themselves at destinations across the state of New York. Public opinion affects public relations. The change of marriage laws opened up a new population for wedding and travel destinations. Without this change, marketers would have never been able to target their campaigns toward the LGBT community. "Public opinion is a public's expressed attitudes on a particular topic at a particular moment in time (Guth & Marsh 268)." It is no secret that gay rights is a top topic of discussion nowadays. With more states and countries passing laws legalizing gay marriage it makes since to gear travel destinations toward this population. Unfortunately, trying to gain the LGBT population's attention may turn off other conservative markets. However, the benefits outweigh the cost because not only are marketers gaining a new population to target but, also the support and respect from LGBT supporters. A pat on the back is deserved to these destinations that are choosing to ethically include all types of travelers in their campaigns. |