Ian Johnson, Out Now
December 19, 2007
TOPICS: Gay tourism marketing. Gay tourism market. Gay travel market. LGBT travel marketing. Buenos Aires, Argentina. Axel Hotel opens in Buenos Aires targeting gay travel market.The lesbian and gay tourism market has been expanding year on year for well over a decade.
One of the clear signs of gay travel marketing impact on the tourism market is the advent of global quality brand gay targeted accommodation.
One example is the Axel Hotel brand, from Barcelona, which Gay Market News has reported on before in the context of the global growth in gay marketing.
The New York Times recently included an interesting article on the opening of the Axel brand hotel in that bastion of macho culture -- Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The sign of the times that represents in the growth of gay travel marketing bears noting.
Here is an extract from the New York Times article on the expansion of global gay and lesbian travel:
In Macho Argentina, a New Beacon for Gay Tourists
Home to the sexy tango and strapping meat-eaters, this South American capital has long been thought of as a bastion of macho attitudes. But a new hotel here is adding to the city’s growing image as a bastion of gay-friendliness.
The Axel Hotel, a Spanish import that opened in November, has come to symbolize Buenos Aires’s increasingly aggressive effort to court gay dollars and euros. It is Latin America’s first luxury hotel built exclusively with gay customers in mind.
That Buenos Aires would be chosen for such a marketing experiment is a result of a marked change over the past several years in the acceptance of gay men and lesbians in Argentine society. This city of three million people has come a long way from the years of military dictatorship, when being openly gay could lead to jail. Five years ago this was the first major Latin American city to legalize same-sex unions, and this summer it was host to a World Cup for gay soccer players, a first in the region.
“There is so much more freedom these days,” said Mauricio Urbides, a 28-year-old fashion designer, who sipped red wine with two male friends at the hotel recently. “You see gays on television here, in government. Just 15 years ago it was a completely different situation.”
Argentine social mores began loosening in the 1990s, when the pegging of the peso to the dollar gave Argentines more spending power, allowing many to travel abroad. “People traveled and found there were other ways of living that were completely different than what they were used to,” Mr. Urbides said.
The devalued currency made Buenos Aires a relative bargain for Western tourists, including many who are gay and like the city’s European sophistication. In recent years marketers have more aggressively sought to promote the city as a gay tourist destination. Gay tango bars and wine shops have sprouted up, and a new “friendly card” helps travelers and local residents alike to get discounts at gay-friendly shops and restaurants.
Travel industry experts estimate that about 20 percent of the tourists here are gay — 300,000 a year — and they spend $600 million here annually.
Even as tourism has been flourishing, so, too, has local gay activism. It was young gay rights advocates who successfully pushed to legalize same-sex unions, despite resistance from the Roman Catholic Church. At the end of November the lower house of Congress in Uruguay, Argentina’s neighbor, legalized homosexual unions there, too. If the Senate approves the law, Uruguay would be one of only six countries with such a law. Advocates in Argentina, meanwhile, are pushing Congress to extend health benefits to gay couples.
Yet some visitors still complain of homophobic treatment, said Marcelo Suntheim, secretary of the Community of Homosexuals in Argentina, an activist group. He said the group received three complaints this year from gay couples who said hotel concierges in Buenos Aires “asked them not to kiss in the lobby because children were present.”
So some local residents say they hope that the Axel will offer another place where same-sex couples can feel more comfortable. The hotel, which has billed itself as “hetero-friendly,” is the second gay-themed hotel to be built by Juan Juliá, an entrepreneur from Barcelona, where the first Axel opened three years ago.
The 48-room Axel promotes itself as a place for fun, complete with a glass-bottomed rooftop pool, and free condoms.
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