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Comments (8)
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Save/ShareToday Expedia has added a filter for gay-welcoming hotels in its main search tool. Here's how it works: Say you search for a hotel in Toronto. The site will fetch a list of hotels available for your travel dates. You can filter the results to only include hotels with the perks you want by checking off "amenities listed in the right-hand column. As of today, there's a new amenity to choose from: "LGBT-welcoming." It's listed along with other options, such as "air conditioning" and "fitness equipment." (If it's a hotel is truly gay-welcoming, it will probably have both air conditioning and fitness equipment, too. Haha.)
So far Expedia has only had time to tag hotels in a handful of destinations. Gay-friendly hotels only pop up if you do searches for visits to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, New Orleans, Palm Springs, Provincetown, San Francisco, and South Florida. International destinations with the LGBT-welcoming filter include Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, London, Toronto, and Puerto Vallarta. A search for a stay in Puerto Vallarta, for instance, turns up two hotels labeled "LGBT-welcoming": Abbey Hotel (from $61 a night!) and Vallarta Palace All Inclusive (a much fancier joint, from $347).
At the moment, the site lists about 500 hotels worldwide, though that is an undercount of how many gay-welcoming hotels there are out there, obviously. Expedia was helped in determining which hotels to use by the International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA).
Expedia's strategy differs somewhat from its competitors' tactics. By adding "gay-welcoming" to its universal list of amenities, the site allows gay travelers to use the the same search engine everyone else uses on its homepage to hunt for hotels. Travelocity took a different strategy by putting a link on its homepage to "gay travel" and then listing gay-friendly hotels in a separate search tool on its LGBT travel page (gaytravelocity.com). Orbitz also has a separate gay travel page, but no search filter for LGBT-friendly hotels.
Expedia has also unveiled its new LGBT travel page (www.expedia.com/daily/gaytravel), which provides a smattering of info, such as month-by-month lists of Pride festivals around the world.
All of this is a big change for Expedia, owned as part of the same company as TripAdvisor. More than 50 readers have commented, from all perspectives, on the notion of LGBT-welcoming search on the earlier blog post "TripAdvisor Playing It a Little Too Straight."
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As a straight married man I find this rather hard to understand - are we to understand that any hotel not flagged as such does something to make themselves non-gay friendly? In today's corporate/anti-discrimination environment can a US public company really not officially be gay friendly?
Looking future on the Travelocity site I do see What Qualifies a Property to be TAG Approved®? Primarily it seems they have better gay friend employee policies and training.
So is this just about support businesses who as an employer support gay rights?
It seems like any rule of not discriminating against guests who are gay is really a rule that employees follow existing anti-discrimination laws?
Or is it legal in the US for hotels to discriminate based on sexual orientation?
Posted By Iolaire McFadden on May 21, 2010, 1:12 PM
In answer to Iolaire's question, it is indeed perfectly legal for hotels to discriminate against guests based on sexual orientation in most places in the US - unless the state or municipality has a law on the books that prohibits such in the provision of public accommodations. Therefore, it is prudent for the LGBT traveler to know which hotels have implicitly stated that they do not discriminate. One way of determining this is to see if the hotel in question has LGBT-friendly employee policies (presumably, a hotel would not have that AND discriminate against gay guests both). I would agree that logic would seem to dictate that a business would be foolish to turn away paying customers based on such irrelevancies, but it does happen.
Posted By Garandu on May 23, 2010, 12:08 PM
For those outside the U.S. that may find it surprising this type of discrimination actually exists here perhaps you shouldn't be.
This is the land of "do as I say, not as I do" and talks out of both sides of it's mouth on most issues.
Posted By Steve on May 26, 2010, 7:18 PM
Im happy to hear Expedia has a filter for LGBT Friendly... Nothing brings the mood of a "vacation" down than having to deal with people who would rather not have you around. I can deal with the fact that people can disagree with who I mate with... But after I've paid money to relax... why deal with it... when I can patronize some other business that's at least friendly...
Posted By chris wiley on May 27, 2010, 1:48 PM
Having an establishment note that it is gay-welcoming (the usual term is gay-friendly) means a couple can check in together and request one bed without getting the fish-eye, hassle or mistreatment. And it prevents awkward or hostile situations for both the guest and the un-gay-friendly establishment when knowing who not to offend with their presence and expendable incomes. This is especially risky in small establishments and B&B's that may be old-fashioned in their views.
Posted By Tips on May 27, 2010, 11:00 PM
I would rather see an option places closes to gay points of interest I don't care how "gay welcoming" a place is if it is not near the bars, cafe's and area's I want to go to.
Posted By Calvin on May 29, 2010, 9:48 AM
Dear Calvin,
With your money, you can go wherever you like.
Sincerely,
Fan of Mr. Klein
Posted By JOHN on May 30, 2010, 1:11 PM
Yes it is legal in the U.S. for hotels to discriminate against LGBT people unless a state law provides otherwise. It has happened for years and still happens that LGBT people are either outright denied accommodations or put in a room with two beds when an LGBT couple requests one bed. I have personally reserved a king size bed and upon arrival with my partner find we can only have the room with two queen beds. Then a heterosexual couple arrives and low and behold, a King bed just became available! There is no federal legislation to prohibit LGBT discriminaiton in public accommodations, employment, housing, etc.
Posted By Betty on July 15, 2010, 9:44 AM