A new national survey by Harris Interactive, Travel Industry Association, and Witeck-Combs Communications highlights some trends in travel for gays and lesbians. I first stumbled across the results as reported by Echelon Magazine although I do remember actually receiving and participating in the survey.

The study showed that almost half of gays and lesbians responding indicated that the gay-friendliness of a destination is important to them when making a leisure travel decision. This not only reinforces the fact that we want to feel safe and open during our leisure travel but also points to a huge economic opportunity for destinations who wish to court the queer travel dollar. The study lists the top 21 gay friendly desinations in the article with the top 5 being (not too surprisingly) San Francisco, CA (76%), Key West, FL (57%), New York, NY (51%), Fire Island, NY (48%), Provincetown, MA (46%). No great shocker there.

Personally I know that I prefer a gay friendly destination (as well as gay-friendly accommodations, dining, etc.). What I also know is that I don’t limit my travel choices based on the destination. Plain and simple there are places I want to see and experience on this planet and I can’t be worried about whether they fly the rainbow flag there. It’s not like I’m going to see our colors in the National Parks anytime soon and those are my favorite places to visit. That being said, I don’t have any openly hostile places on my vacation wish list either. Mainly because I don’t have an earthshattering desire to travel there. How my partner and I interact on vacation, though is definitely influenced by where we are and how gay friendly it is. As much as I love to hold my partner’s hand, it’s not something I do in most destinations unless it feels like the right place to do so. Of course, given my itineraries, my hands are usually filled with kayak paddles, hiking poles, or bike handles anyway. I also know that we tend to spend more money on vacation when in a gay friendly location. They tend to have more entertainment that appeals to me and oftentimes more upscale accommodations and dining as well. Goodness knows I threw budgets to the wind when we took our first Olivia cruise this year. And, it was worth every penny.

The study also disclosed that gay men tend to spend more than lesbians or heterosexuals when it comes to travel. Traveling alone, gay men spent more than a third more than their heterosexual counterparts. Traveling in groups, gay men spent more on average than lesbians in a group. I’m not sure if that is due to the ongoing income gap between men and women or some other factor. You can learn more about the survey and obtain information on purchasing the complete results at the Harris Interactive website.