LGBTQ Canadians have, in the last 15-20 years, won the majority of the same rights that their heterosexual counterparts enjoy. Despite this victory, there is a lack of education for businesses on how to treat LGBTQ clientele. This can be especially worrisome in the tourism/hospitality industry. Rod Zelles, President of Blue Flame Ventures, works with companies to improve their awareness of our community’s needs.
"When I first started the company, initially...I was going to teach companies how to market to the LGBT community. But since then it’s almost taken a back seat to now where it’s more educating than anything."
Blue Flame Ventures has expanded to offer seminars and marketing consultation services to Canadian tourism businesses such as hotels, motels, city attractions and tourism centres.
Internationally, there is a growing interest in Canada as a vacation destination for lesbian and gay tourists because of the freedom LGBTQ citizens enjoy. The gay and lesbian tourist market is a $600 billion consumer market worldwide with the United States contributing $63.3 billion annually.
Unfortunately, Rod thinks Canada has not yet truly realized its potential. "Businesses have the mentality of we need your business, and they need to get rid of that mentality and take on the mentality of we WANT your business...what do we need to do to get you to come here?" Businesses have to promote the fact they are gay-friendly, they have to promote Canada as a destination, and they can certainly promote the same sex wedding aspect. In the past, Rod recalls he has had travel agencies promoting travel outside of Canada, yet only after he sold them on the LGBTQ angle has he seen them promoting inbound tourists to Canada.
Sadly, he still encounters businesses that are completely oblivious, to sometimes having outright ignorant attitudes toward Queer travellers. According to Rod, he has called hotels in some of the cities where he has done seminars and asked the front desk about local gay businesses or events. A majority of the cities he surveyed saw disheartening responses ranging from I don’t know/I don’t care to Eww, gross! (this last response coming from a front desk staffer at a 5-star hotel). Now chances are "in person" you would get more customer-friendly responses. Yet if you are a seasoned traveller and you’re calling ahead to find out about a city that is unfamiliar to you, if a hotel gives you ambivalent or negative responses, there are consequences, as Rod tells us: "one, you’ve just lost my business, and two, I may think twice before going to that city."
The problem, as he sees it, is that relatively speaking, Canadian society went from no rights for LGBTQ individuals to full rights almost overnight. There has been no real education on how a business should properly treat their Queer customers. Of course hotels and other businesses will say they’re gay friendly (in theory) but it’s how they are in practise which can win or lose customers.
As well, these business and organizations may not know they will be getting a good return on investment for being gay friendly. For example, Rod told me some travel search engines list "LGBT Friendly" as an amenity. So when searching, "I may pull up 200 hotels and I’ll click LGBT Friendly - all of those hotels but one or two will be gone." Those two have just cornered the market.
Furthermore, as soon as you acknowledge there are a different group of people with different needs, people may be more inclined to go to your business. By way of example, Rod says if he came across two identical stores selling the same product at the same price, he’s more inclined to shop at the one with the rainbow flag in the window.
Additionally, while acknowledgement is fine, people involved in the tourism industry need to take it a step further and be aware. If you’re sending out ads to an Asian country asking them to come visit Canada, you’d probably have Asian people in the ads. Therefore if you are catering to the GLBTQ traveller, besides perhaps having the rainbow flag, you’d be smart to have gay or lesbian couples in your advertising copy. "Having a family with kids...and a Mom and Dad with grandparents...that is going to do absolutely nothing for you." While a LGBTQ Traveller may not be specifically looking for a gay friendly hotel, they’ll recognize it when they are at one.
However, some people may not want to be given special or different treatment. In Rod’s personal opinion: "I understand that we don’t want to be treated any differently, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. But I personally feel that where we are right now is that it actually does need to be separated before it can be whole." 20 years down the road we – hopefully – will be treated as any other customer, but right now as this is a new stage in our society, we may need businesses to understand LGBTQ customers have different needs. "This has never been about special treatment...it’s more about acknowledgement."
Rod admits that any business does have the right to not explicitly cater to the LGBTQ community. But a city or region’s tourist board does not have that choice. These organizations exist to promote the friendliness of the region to everyone, including the Queer traveller. For this reason, Rod also reaches out to municipal governments, local chambers of commerce and tourism boards when he travels to cities doing his seminars.
He suggests these organizations should put a tab or page on their website acknowledging the LGBTQ traveller. Unfortunately, many tourism boards won’t do this because, as Rod puts it, "they’re not comfortable doing that on their website because they don’t know if their destination is LGBT friendly, and they don’t want to have to worry about the gay and lesbian traveller and their safety."
Still, Rod calls them on it, as this is not something they would do for straight visitors. People will do their own research about the safety of the area. All he’s asking is these organizations acknowledge the gay traveller.
Acknowledgement and respect is what he wants businesses to give to LGBTQ clientele. Perhaps it’s not as topical as the anti-bullying campaigns people are pushing in schools. It is still important, though, at any age, and anywhere; especially in a country where we have those rights, those freedoms. Tourists and travellers are coming to Canada because we are gay-friendly. It’s up to us to make sure we’re gay-welcoming.