How beautiful is travel! At least as long as you can feel safe. I can not do this.
The Pyramids of Giza in Egypt are said to be a truly mesmerizing sight. What was built there by human hands – and that more than 4,000 years ago, a wonder of the world through and through! Significantly younger, but no less imposing, Hagia Sophia, once the largest cathedral in antiquity, towers over the old city of Istanbul in Turkey. The spring water of the Szechenyi Spa in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is said to have a relaxing and healing effect.
How beautiful these places are for sure, but what do I know, I only know them from stories from friends and pictures in travel guides and the internet. Because I’m not welcome in these beautiful places.
Queer people are a thorn in the side of some countries
In 2020 a book was published called “I am Egyptian and I am gay”. It tells of self-loathing and remorse, of thoughts of suicide. Because Essâm, who emailed his life story to the author and journalist Mostafa Fathi in 2009, is gay and Muslim. The narrative of the tragic queer person is a bitter reality for Essâm and many others – not only in Egypt.
Fines are unlikely to protect local queer people from abuse and discrimination.
The Pride parade in the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul has been banned since 2015. Nevertheless, queer people gathered this year to demonstrate for their rights and freedom. They encountered a massive police force that did everything possible to wipe people, their flags and symbols off the streets. There were over 200 arrests that day just because people took to the streets to stand up for their rights.
In Hungary, there has been an anti-LGBTQIA+ law since 2021, after which any educational and image material for children as well as advertising that depicts sexualities that deviate from the heterosexual norm is prohibited. A year later, the EU Commission sued Hungary because it saw violations of minority rights and freedom of the media. The fines are unlikely to protect local queer people from abuse and discrimination.
Egypt, Turkey, Hungary – just three examples from a very long list of countries that have little to no acceptance of people who deviate from the heteronormativity according to which a person “prefers” to be male, cis, white and straight.
Travel companies are showing interest in queers More and more travel companies are discovering queer people as potential customers. © BRIAN_KINNEY / Adobe Stock
I was at a Booking.com event recently. The online travel agency has discovered the topic of queerness for itself – no wonder, since queer people tend to have a higher household income than heterosexual couples. On the one hand, this is surprising, after all, there is not only the gender gap, after women earn less than men, but also the gay-wage gap between queer and heterosexual people.
On the other hand, queer couples tend to be less likely to have the “cost factor child”: According to “Zeit” in 2021, same-sex couples with children lived in 12,000 households – according to the Federal Statistical Office, on the other hand, there were a total of 163,000 same-sex married couples at the end of 2020, and 34,000 couples also lived in a registered household Life partner: inside. Surely this circumstance is based on the fact that not everyone wants to have children – and for some one factor may be that our society puts as many obstacles in the way of queer people when it comes to children, but that’s another topic.
“I sent Qatar as a travel destination to the desert”
At the event, Booking.com presented a study it commissioned, according to which over 80 percent of queer travelers have already had less than pleasant or even unpleasant experiences. Almost half (47 percent) of those surveyed have experienced discrimination while travelling, with nearly a quarter (24 percent) facing stereotyping and more than one in ten queer people (12 percent) experiencing abuse at the hands of fellow travelers or locals.
The world is big enough.
Queer travelers have to pay close attention to where they spend their time, which is supposed to bring relaxation for people. Drag queen Olivia Jones was also a guest at the event, and she spoke out clearly about the experiences of discrimination that queer people often have to experience when traveling when they “dare” to visit a country without first knowing about the acceptance of their identity locally to inform. Simply because they would like to see something of the world, or maybe because they are so foolish as to expect to be met with the same acceptance that they would show to other people.
“I sent Qatar to the desert as a travel destination,” says Jones. “Countries that welcome money as long as you leave your values at home will find it increasingly difficult in the future.” She struggled to be accepted for who she is. “And if I’m only welcome somewhere else, if I deny myself, I’d rather travel somewhere else now. The world is big enough.”
“We are neither the government nor the police”
Alexei Matouchkine, Regional Director at Booking.com, was also present at the event. He cautiously answers the question of a travel journalist present, who addresses a dilemma that should be clear to everyone present: What can a company that works capitalistically do about global problems such as discrimination against queer people and other minorities? Or rather, what should it do? Will Qatar, Dubai, Egypt, Hungary, Turkey and dozens of other countries be “cancelled”? Hardly likely. “We are not the government and we are not the police either,” Matouchkine clarifies.
Sentences like these are also known from tourists who like to visit places like China, the Ivory Coast or Indonesia. In such cases, however, such a sentence rarely means anything other than: What happens there is none of our business.
What Booking.com is doing, however, is offering a 75-minute online training session to “help hospitality professionals understand the challenges and barriers faced by the LGBTQ+ community when traveling and provide them with practical skills and techniques to available that they can immediately put into practice”.
The “Proud Hospitality Training” program started worldwide in August 2021 in English and French, is now also available in German and will soon be available in Spanish. Accommodations that complete the training will receive a “Travel Proud” badge – allowing queer people to identify at a glance accommodations that are “committed to making more inclusive hospitality their standard,” according to the press release.
Discrimination affects us all Discrimination is not just a problem in other countries © Good Studio / Adobe Stock
This is certainly a good first and important step for a large travel company to limit experiences of discrimination for queer people as much as possible, at least on vacation. Other companies have long recognized that traveling for queer people entails special demands. The travel company Over the Rainbow offers under the heading “Queer Travel” not only a gay cruise but also trips to different countries. Queer people can also find places where their identity is welcome on gayreisen.de.
As tourists, we can specifically support countries and societies that share our values.
But does that help queer people outside of these shelters in anti-queer countries? No of course not. The “Travel Proud” certificate from Booking.com, the queer trips from other travel companies – in the end they are all only intended for paying customers as an orientation. No more, no less. Does every person—queer or not—with a trip to countries that oppress, discriminate against, abuse and murder queer people, women, people of color and other groups of people support a government for which human rights are at most a side note? Yes absolutely.
“As tourists, we can specifically support countries and societies that share our values or are at least on the right track,” says Jones at the Booking.com event. Holidays are the time when we all want to relax, not worry about anything, live the day and enjoy life. We all deserve it. No one, on the other hand, deserves to be beaten, tortured, arrested, raped, stoned, insulted, or even driven to suicide simply because they do not conform to the arbitrary norms of the society and time in which they happen to be born became.
These things happen every day, even on our vacation, even in the places where we “finally want to relax”.
Sources used: auswaertiges-amt.de, tripadvisor.de, queer.de, deutschlandfunkkultur.de, tagesschau.de, zeit.de, destatis.de, lsvd.de, Booking.com press release