A romantic island getaway in the Maldives. A safari in Kenya. A visit to the pyramids in Egypt.
Apart from being popular on bucket lists, these places have one thing in common: Their destinations have strict anti-LGBT legislation. In the Maldives, gay sex may be punished with lashes and up to eight years in prison. In Kenya, it can bring a sentence of up to 14 years. And in Egypt, the authorities are known to throw people in jail for simply waving a rainbow flag.
Paradoxically, these trips are also all offered by travel companies founded by and catering to members of the LGBTQ community. In interviews, the founders of four of these companies, which take a combined total of 3000 tourists — most of them American — abroad each year, said they were providing a safe way to meet a growing demand for trips to countries that criminalise LGBT people.
“I’m gay and I want to visit these places,” said Darren Burn, the founder of Out of Office, an inclusive luxury travel company. “And if I want to visit these places, then there are other gay people who do, too. So if we can enable them to do it in a fun, exciting and safe way, then that’s exactly what we’re here for.”
A world that isn’t always friendly
By some metrics, certain LGBT Americans have it easier when it comes to planning their next trip. Same-sex couples tend to have more disposable income because they are less likely to have children and more likely to both be employed, according to census data. Married gay men have the most spending power, with a median household income that is more than $25,000 higher than their straight and lesbian counterparts. Even so, being out and getting out can be at odds in a world where many places are hostile — and sometimes outright dangerous.
“There is no place on Earth where you can be 100 per cent safe while being LGBT, at least while expressing it,” said Lucas Ramón Mendos, a lawyer and the research coordinator at ILGA World, an LGBT human rights group. “What we can say for certain is that where there is a legal framework that strictly, explicitly criminalises certain expressions, the likelihood of getting into trouble is a lot higher.”
According to ILGA World maps that track the world’s sexual orientation laws, there are still more than 60 countries that criminalise consensual same-sex relations. Punishments range from incarceration to the death penalty. Uganda notably just enacted a law calling for life in prison for anyone convicted of having gay sex and in some cases even death.
Scratching those countries off the list of possible destinations shrinks the globe dramatically: parts of Asia, more than half of African countries, and practically the entire Middle East — with the exceptions of Israel and Jordan — become off-limits. (And that’s not even taking into account countries like China and Russia that target LGBT people indirectly, by censoring speech, for example.)
Yet LGBT travel companies frequently visit such places.
“I’ve never had an issue. I haven’t heard of anyone having issues,” said Bryan Herb, co-founder of Zoom Vacations, which operates small tours in countries such as Kenya, the Maldives and Morocco, all places where gay sex can bring prison terms. “There’s no there there.”
Safer for some than for others
While US diplomatic missions help Americans who get in trouble abroad, Angela Kerwin, a senior official at the Bureau of Consular Affairs, said they do not collect data in a way that would allow them to track cases involving LGBT travellers specifically.
“The laws that criminalise LGBT status or conduct around the world are more often than not used to target and punish people from the country in question,” said Jessica Stern, the US special envoy to advance the human rights of LGBT persons. “That’s not to say that LGBT Americans and their families aren’t at risk when they travel, but we are not the primary targets of those laws.” (For Americans who also carry a passport from the country they’re visiting, this guidance might not be as straightforward, Kerwin said. They might be treated as citizens by the local authorities.)
None of the four travel company founders reported any clients who’d had legal run-ins, though some mentioned minor brushes with locals. Their clientele tends to be older and male, with transgender travellers a rarity.
Safety concerns can be especially daunting for transgender people headed abroad. They already face hurdles to updating travel documents and are more likely to live in poverty than other LGBT people.
“I have recently had a flight cancelled and they were rerouting me through a very hostile country for LGBT folks, and I was going to be laid over there for nine hours,” said Jay Brown, a senior executive for the Human Rights Campaign, who is transgender. He asked not to name the country for fear it could hurt working relationships with advocates in the region. “If I had a health care emergency in that country, I don’t know what would happen to me,” he said.
Brown ended up taking three trains and three flights in 26 hours to avoid the layover. “I ran from gate to gate at every airport, and ran from train to train,” he said. “My bag, of course, was not at my destination.”
Most countries that criminalise same-sex relations lack a legal and regulatory framework when it comes to gender transition.
“I wouldn’t say that because these laws target only homosexual acts, that transgender people are safe,” said Mendos. “It’s exactly the opposite, actually.”
Pink money in a grey zone
Many countries may just depend on the influx of tourist dollars so much that they’re willing to give tourists — whether straight or gay — special treatment.
The tourism industry is a top contributor to Kenya’s gross domestic product and accounts for more than half a million jobs in Morocco. Hospitality also drives the economy in the Maldives, where three local men recently received prison sentences for having homosexual relations, while dozens more have been investigated.
“In every country on Earth, the law doesn’t necessarily match the reality,” said Burn, whose company offers package deals for symbolic same-sex marriages and honeymoons in the Maldives, which start at around US$5000 per person. “You know, it’s illegal to drink alcohol in the Maldives, but you go to every resort and you can drink alcohol.”
It’s in that grey zone that LGBT travel companies operate. Yet when they’re lining up suppliers and hiring local workers, they are anything but ambiguous.
Robert Driscoll, who has run the small-tour operator Venture Out since 1998, said that to avoid unpleasant surprises, it was important to be “clear with suppliers about what the nature of the group is and making sure that they’re okay with it.”
He said that years ago when he first started taking gay Americans abroad, it wasn’t uncommon for his inquiries to suppliers to go unanswered. Now, he receives emails daily courting his business, some from unexpected places.
“We would love the opportunity to work with your organisation to create tailored itineraries for your LGBT travellers in Tanzania,” read a recent email he received from a small safari operator.
Under a colonial-era law, Tanzania punishes consensual gay sex with up to life in prison, and last April, the government shut down thousands of websites and social media accounts linked to gay groups and people. Neighboring Kenya, also a popular safari destination, has recently experienced a rise in anti-LGBT violence.
Safaris are among the most expensive trips LGBT travel companies offer, with prices running into the five digits. Driscoll, who has led many groups to watch wildlife in Africa, said he recently had a same-sex couple cancel their trip to Tanzania after reading a travel advisory on the State Department website warning travellers about “targeting of LGBT persons.”
The Tanzania Tourist Board, as well as the tourism agencies of the other countries discussed in this article, did not reply to requests for comment.
Weighing the risks and ethics
Kerwin of the Bureau of Consular Affairs said prospective travellers should go beyond the State Department travel advisories and read the agency’s yearly human rights report, which includes detailed information on the situation of LGBT rights for each country.
“Never can you cover every eventuality,” she said. “But if you’re informed, then you can make a decision as to whether or not you actually want to travel to that country.”
“Any legal and safety information we provide to clients before they pay us a deposit,” said Robert Sharp, a co-founder of Out Adventures, a small-tour operator based in Canada that serves a largely American clientele. “It is our moral and legal obligation to allow them to decide if it is right for them.”
All travel companies surveyed for this article strongly recommend that clients take out travel insurance, and some even require it. Out of Office and Out Adventures also offer 24-hour hotlines to respond to clients’ questions and emergencies.
Yet travel companies are not legal firms, and they say that the best they can do is give travellers enough information to make an informed decision. Out Adventures clearly states the laws and limitations of each destination on its website. When travelling to Tanzania, for example, clients are advised to practice discretion since “even heterosexual PDAs are frowned upon,” referring to public displays of affection.
The page for Out Adventures’ tour to Egypt, including a Nile River cruise and snorkelling in the Red Sea starting at US$5495 per traveller, explains that “gay dating apps should be avoided” and discourages clients from trying to participate in the “underground gay scene” of the larger cities.
The Egyptian authorities have been reported to harass and entrap members of the LGBT community on social media and torture those in custody.
“Not only do we want to protect the group,” Sharp said, “but we don’t want to put anyone in the local queer community in a situation where they could be at risk because they’re seen with this group of obvious homosexuals.”
Gurchaten Sandhu, ILGA World’s director of programmes, warned of the dangers of “advocacy tourism,” where travellers get involved in activism at their destination, possibly jeopardising not only themselves but also those they leave behind when their holiday is over.
Calling for travellers to boycott a country could also have unexpected adverse outcomes, Mendos of ILGA World and others cautioned.
While the impulse often stems from a desire to help, Stern said, pushing for this kind of action without making sure LGBT rights groups in the country stand behind it could lead to a backlash against local LGBT people and “do more harm than good.”
Choosing to visit, on the other hand — even if you can’t be as out as you might want to be — may still have a positive impact on LGBT people’s lives, at least indirectly.
“The travel industry in country after country is often one of the places where LGBT people seek out jobs and find employment because there is heightened tolerance,” Stern said.
Quietly promoting change
There is no shortage of companies to pick from when planning a holiday to countries like Kenya, Egypt or the Maldives, but LGBT travel providers say what sets them apart from mainstream options is not only that they make their clients feel welcome and safe, but also that they direct their resources to hand-picked, queer-friendly businesses.
“We are putting money in the pockets of more progressive-thinking people and organisations that in the long run can contribute to progress by our definition,” said Sharp. Additionally, he said, Out Adventures has donated “quietly, behind the scenes” to local LGBT organisations in countries where being gay is illegal, and is currently giving US$50 per traveller to Rainbow Railroad, a nonprofit organisation that helps LGBT people escape state-sponsored violence. Out of Office has a similar programme, Burn said, though he wouldn’t go into detail, citing concerns about the safety of those receiving the donations.
Ultimately, Driscoll of Venture Out said, the decision about whether to avoid travel to certain destinations based on principle was a deeply personal one that travellers had to make for themselves.
“It’s easy to feel outraged,” said Mendos of ILGA World. “I think that that’s a sound reaction. But people should be aware that change doesn’t happen overnight.”
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