Calgary Wants Gay Travel

TOPICS: Lesbian and gay tourism, US gay market. Lesbian and gay marketing. Gay travel marketing. Canada, Calgary. New gay tourism push in Calgary, Canada, seeks to attract lesbian and gay travelers to visit this market.

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So the continuing roll-call of destinations wanting to appeal to gay travelers goes on.

Latest to step up is Calgary in Canada, with reports of that city's tourism sector having a new gay travel market emphasis to attract lesbian and gay travelers to the city.

The ultimate test of success is measured in dollars but the criteria are not too difficult to work out either. Calgary, like other cities before it, needs to appeal on two levels.

First - it must be gay-friendly, or as we prefer to describe it "Gay Comfortable". Its tourism industry and travel market players must be both welcoming and entirely comfortable in hosting lesbian and gay guests to their city. This in turn makes the lesbian or gay traveler comfortable with the experience and turns them into gay traveler advocates for the destination - building repeat and referral business for Calgary.

Second - the city needs to package its destination attractions - both gay and straight - in a communications package that connects with lesbian and gay customers. That requires more than just slapping a rainbow flag on an advertisement or running a mainstream gay creative in lesbian and gay media. When communications is the name of the game, all marketing materials targeting gay and lesbian people should do just that - they must communicate as effectively as possible.

Failure to get these two things right will see any city destination marketing campaign targeting gay travelers fail. Getting it right will not guarantee success but without these two factors Calgary, and other destinations setting out on new gay tourism marketing initiatives will likely not succeed.

Here is an extract of The Vancouver Sun article about Calgary Canada's new gay travel marketing strategy:

Redneck turf woos gay tourism -- Tourism Calgary promotes city as clean, safe and friendly, and will host Outgames in April

Published: Saturday, January 27, 2007
CALGARY -- The hometown of rugged ranchers, burly oilmen and Reform party politicians is coming out, confessing a desire to reposition itself as a destination for the gay and lesbian travel market.

"We're clean, we're friendly and we're safe," boasts Joe Connelly, vice-president of sales and servicing for Tourism Calgary, listing reasons he thinks Cowtown has gay appeal. Those qualities might make a good starting point -- whether wooing someone for their tourist dollars or for a blind date. But surely Calgary needs a slicker pitch if it hopes to convince gays and lesbians that a city known for its rednecks is ready to welcome a splash of pink.

This isn't the only tourist destination, after all, experimenting with homosexuality. Since Philadelphia discovered years ago the millions to be made from promoting the City of Brotherly Love (Slogan: "Get your history straight and your nightlife gay"), municipalities worldwide have turned on to the segment, which the travel industry estimates is worth $65 billion US in the United States and billions more in Canada.

"Gay men and women travel a hell of a lot more than straight couples do," says Steve Polyak, publisher of Gay Calgary and Edmonton, a magazine aimed largely at Alberta's gay tourists. "Most of us don't have children ... so we have larger disposable incomes. The likelihood of a gay man hopping on an airplane just to go on a trip somewhere across Canada or the United States is very high."

Not everyone thinks the city can pull it off.

"Anyone who says the city is very gay-friendly should probably loosen their cowboy hat a notch or two," says one former Calgary resident who runs an anti-homophobia blog, Slap Upside the Head, going only by the name Mark. "You can't comfortably hold hands in public and, provincially, you're still under attack by policy-makers."

Rather than marketing the city as a great place for gays, Mark adds, "I'd promote the city more as a fascinating trip back through time."

"I'm not going to say that Calgary's perfect and we don't have any type of behaviour like that here," Connelly says. "But I think you see less of that here than elsewhere." And to someone from almost anywhere in the United States outside of California or New York, agrees Polyak, Calgary appears an oasis of broadmindedness. Gay tourists, he says, "are surprised at how liberal the community is."

While officials are just getting the idea to cash in on gay-trippers (prompted, in part, by a new study by the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce examining the travelling habits of homosexuals in six cities, including Calgary) Alberta's largest city has long been appealing, says Bruce McDonald, co-founder of the aforementioned chamber of commerce.

For more than a decade, the Alberta Rockies Gay Rodeo Association's annual rodeo has lured ropers and wrasslers of an alternative lifestyle from across North America. And for more than a quarter-century, Calgary has been home to the annual Western Cup, a popular international gay sports tournament.

Meanwhile, ever since Brokeback Mountain was released in 2005, Tourism Alberta has leveraged the cowpokes-in-love picture, shot in and around Calgary, to lure fans to the breathtaking scenery.

In April, Calgary hosts the North American Outgames, a continental version of the global event launched last year in Montreal.
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