The Golden Rules of Queer Travel

Paramount/Everett Collection

It’s a curious thing, queer travel: When I’m at home, my queerness is an inalienable part of me, a concrete fact; but when I go abroad it activates like a magnet, drawing me close to certain people and places, drawing those people and places closer to me. It’s a joy that borders on the ecstatic, to find yourself—and others like yourself—wherever you are. So if you must travel, I recommend being gay while doing it. It’s not for everyone, but it can really lighten things up.

Queer travel is an ancient human tradition, the subject of films from chosen family travels in Under the Tuscan Sun to drag queens hitting the road in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar; Transamerica’s mother-son road trip to Pirates of the Caribbean’s polyamory cruise. (Not to mention queer desire gone awry in The Talented Mr. Ripley.) More recently, it’s become an economy of scale: It’s now a $200 billion dollar slice of the trillion-dollar global tourism market, according to the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association. These dollars are generated by cruises, walking tours, resorts, weddings and honeymoons, and Pride celebrations—with more opportunities doubtless being invented as you read this. Soon enough, I expect even straight people will travel queerly, if the contours of modern tourism bear any resemblance to those of popular culture or the present zeitgeist. (You know how everyone’s now saying “very demure, very mindful”? A trans woman came up with the trend on TikTok.)

Belonging to any segment of the LGBTQ+ world comes with its own rituals and routines. Travel often involves leaving them behind—for better or for worse—and ushers in a whole new set of rules. This is where the golden rules of queer travel come in, informed by a survey of 15 queer travelers and experts. Sure, they’re helpful principles to travel by, whether you’re queer or not. But these are for us, by us. Let them be your beacons wherever your travels take you.

1. Get culturally acquainted

Rule number one of queer travel is to know where you’re going. This is important for travelers of all kinds, but for some, it is an urgent matter of safety and security. There is a pervasive fear among queer travelers about encountering prejudice, or straight-up danger, when visiting an unfamiliar space or society, so even though tourists—queer or not—are often not held to the same set of rules as locals, it’s good practice (and a balm for worries) to get concrete and factual information about a place, particularly its laws and attitudes toward LGBTQ+ citizens.

Equaldex is a digital tool that assigns each nation an “Equality” score between 1 and 100, and you can customize your search to see where things like gay marriage or gender-affirming care are legal and available. That said, data points are just one part of the picture, and these cultural nuances often look different in practice. For example, Dan Q. Dao, a travel and culture writer who regularly contributes to Condé Nast Traveler, is based in Vietnam, Equality index 54. “There’s a Pride parade, but there’s also a mind-your-business culture,” Dao says. Public displays of affection, for one example, can be uncomfortable whether you’re a straight or gay couple. “It’s a very, very open place,” Dao continues. “But even in a place that’s safe, it’s important to know what those norms are.”

2. Stay gay

For Brandon Berkson, the CEO of the hospitality guide Hotels Above Par, the downiest comfort he can find in a property involves some third-party authentication of its queer-inclusive values. He looks at Misterb&b or for the approval seal of Travel Advocacy Group (TAG), which is spun off from the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association. “Both are goldmines for finding chic, LBGTQ+-friendly stays,” Berkson says. Or you can book queer-owned and operated hotels directly, and these tend to abound in gay sanctuary cities (Berkson recommends Maxwell Residences in Puerto Vallarta.)

3. Find the pharmacy

“I tend to find the LGBTQ+ pharmacy wherever I’m going,” Dao adds, referring to places where travelers can find medications like PrEP or test for STIs. “So I have peace of mind, even if I never go.” He uses the Gay Passport, which publishes detailed city guides alongside photos of hunky male tourists. In addition to itinerary recommendations, you can also find information about local clinics and pharmacies, down to a typical cost quote for STI and HIV testing.

4. Download a VPN

Anyone can have a virtual private network. It’s a little digital plug-in that lets you circumvent a local network by teleporting your online session to anywhere else in the world. I downloaded ExpressVPN before I moved to Japan so I could continue to watch The Real Housewives on Peacock, but my friend Justin Fenner, who covers grooming for the Robb Report, says chicly that it was “the only way to get any work done” abroad, should you find yourself, say, in Beijing and need to access the New York Times. Other intrepid friends have used VPNs to access dating apps in countries where they’re blocked or restricted, but this qualifies as very risky behavior, and not the kind I can personally endorse.

5. Get to know the locals

The best intelligence on any given place, and particularly its queer scene, comes from soliciting the locals. Sometimes it helps to send out a flare. “It takes an active effort to connect to a community,” says social media creator Allyssa Leaton, @TheLesbianPassport on all her channels. While living in Buenos Aires, and feeling unmoored from her own community, Leaton decided to host queer picnics and advertised them on TikTok. She ended up meeting hundreds of people, a merry mix of locals and expats. “There are still group chats going on,” she says.

6. Embrace a sense of romance

Do you know who is also locally intelligent? That cutie you follow who’s based in Mexico City. The worst they can say is nothing. For short trips, a dating app might be the only queer travel guide you need. “Say what you will,” Leaton adds with a sigh, “but dating apps are a great resource, even if it doesn’t turn into a romantic connection.”

7. Get customized advice

“I only take travel advice from someone who I’d trust to give me interior design tips,” say Daniel Tucker and Dilan Walpola, co-founders of the design firm Riad &partner, based in Morocco. It’s how they ended up at a kiki ball in an 11th-century monastery and a rave on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, after a perilous drive up the mountain: Seeing the sun rise over the Sorrento cliffs just as Sarra Wild's set ended made it well worth the journey.

8. When you want to err on the safe side, ask for two beds

A few people I spoke to for this story mentioned, if a little ashamedly, a recurring anxiety when checking into a hotel. “Nothing makes me happier than to tell them that my same-sex partner and I only need one bed in the room,” says Adam Hurly, a travel writer based in Lisbon. “But I take extra precaution when booking a hotel room or Airbnb in conservative or religious places.” When in doubt, he’ll book a room with two beds, even if only to use one. The other can act as clothing storage, a luxuriously flat couch, or as a second bed.

9. Always hit the gay bar

Wherever you find yourself, find yourself a gay bar. If nothing else, they are local temples of gay culture. Many also serve delicious food. A visit to a gay bar often also provides access to a gayborhood, which can lead to discoveries of all kinds. But anecdotal reports also indicate that the smaller a gay scene is, the more concentrated its energy can become. One of the most memorable nights of Dao’s life happened when she showed up alone at the only gay bar in Reykjavik. “I spent the night with the drag queens,” he remembers fondly.

10. Seek the rarer lesbian bar

It’s been four years since the Lesbian Bar Project revealed that the entire inventory of lesbian bars in the United States is around 33 (compared to the more than 800 that cater to gay men). Still, compared to the rest of the world, this is a surplus. If gay bars are temples, lesbian bars are shrines whose scarcity lends them an even profounder sanctity—and one certainly worth pilgrimage. Hong Kong has L’Paradis; Frankfurt has Le Gata, which bills itself as one of Europe’s oldest lesbian bars (born in 1971). Leaton recommends Everywhere Is Queer, an app that maintains a global map of queer businesses who have registered to appear on the list. You can find lawyers and life coaches, but you can also find spots like Nathálie, a chic queer-owned wine bar in Boston.

11. Seek group fun, even if you’re solo

There are plenty of organizations that happily fold intrepid single travelers into group experiences, like Walking Women. “We run lesbian holidays for those who want to be sure they’re with like-minded women,” Ginny Lunn, a co-owner, tells me. The group also hosts trips in Malaga and the French Alps, and vets hotels and guides on their hospitality toward queer travelers. “[Being in a group] can help people feel less insecure about some destinations,” she says. And you never know what will happen when you reach out while alone: It was on a solo trip to Spain where Ginny met her first partner some 40 years ago.

12. Don’t go to Paris; go to Gay Paris

The very concept of “queer travel” can offer a new frame for trip-planning, especially when it comes to cities like New York, Paris, or Tokyo that are both highly visitable and too large to digest in one go. “There's a lot of queer history and art in these cultural capitals,” says historian Andrew Lear, whose Oscar Wilde Tours scaffolds trips around LGBTQ+ museums and spaces. A recent trip to India included a visit to Hawa Mahal, the pink palace of Jaipur, as well as lunch with Manvendra Singh Gohil, a queer activist and the world’s only openly gay prince thus far.

13. Be a queer diplomat

Dan Ware, whose Toto Tours bring groups of gay men to places like Bhutan and Botswana, often reminds his guests that they are “ambassadors” for the gay community, but this takes on a new significance when visiting a country where homosexuality bears negative stigmas. “Some locals have never encountered people like us,” Ware says. “First—and lasting—impressions will be formed.” He breaks it down easily: Show respect for everyone you meet, admiration for the traditions for you witness, and gratitude for absolutely everything else.

14. BYOW

From an anonymous tipster: “If you’re in a place where the tap water isn’t drinkable, then it definitely isn’t douche-able either.” Bottled water does the trick. Or boil water from the tap—and then wait for it to cool.

15. Expedite your trip through security

TSA scans at airports operate on the male-female binary. Once you step into that giant millimeter ray vision tube, the attending agent clocks your gender expression and hits one of two buttons that indicate what anatomy the machine should expect. In other words, anything nonbinary may be subject to additional scrutiny. But the process can be sidestepped by those enrolled in TSA PreCheck or Global Entry. “I continually fail body scanners and get asked invasive questions,” says Lindsey Danis, a queer travel writer, who has previously written about the topic for Condé Nast Traveler. “Joining [an expedited security lane] makes airports way less stressful.”

16. Pack, don’t “pack”

Those traveling with wearable prosthetics need not fear airport security, though it’s generally recommended that they’re stowed in your carry-on ahead of time. “I’d make sure they’re discreetly packaged up just in case your bag does get pulled,” says Alex, the mononymous founder of Transthetics, of his brand’s popular Joystick.

17. Be conscious of your ID

Nobody in transportation security is particularly invested in verifying your gender marker on your passport, which, when issued in many countries like the United States, has options for M, F, or X. But not all airlines have implemented the X marker yet, so while the TSA recommends that your gender markers match, “you should generally not have problems with a gender expression that does not match your ID,” according to Joelle Maslak, who edits and contributes to the Travel While Trans project. But note that the rules change when traveling internationally, which may necessitate confirming that your identification matches the info you’ve supplied elsewhere, like on your boarding pass.

19. Continue to carry on

As a senior director for Parfums Christian Dior’s PR efforts, Andrew Favorito might spend a few weeks ping-ponging between Cannes to Los Angeles to Aspen, so he has to pack nimbly but chicly. “I pack jewels and valuables in my carry-on, especially [when I take] connecting flights” he tells me. He also recommends carrying-on a version of your “vacation uniform,” as well as of course having a vacation uniform: a default and flattering outfit that can be worn while walking around town but also be worn to a nice lunch.

20. Explore unexpectedly

At first, the writer Lindsey Danis dreaded their trip to Kentucky, the state that brought us Republican senator Mitch McConnell and iconic homophobe Kim Davis. “I had low expectations,” they said. But they went anyway—and, a bourbon tasting later, booked a return trip to explore the naturally splendid Red River Gorge, and the artsy enclave of Berea, where the writer bell hooks lived and worked for decades; it’s now home to the bell hooks center, perhaps one of the most radically queer corridors in the state Kentucky.

21. Finally, remember that kindness begets kindness

One of the most celebrated queer travelers and writers in history, the late Jan Morris was a former British spy who went on to write over 20 books. Her prose painted portraits of cities like New York and Hong Kong in gorgeous texture. (Approaching Manhattan by road, it rose before her like “a last outpost on the edge of the continent.”) After she transitioned, in 1964, she returned to her hometown in North Wales expecting shock and prejudice. Instead, she found that people treated her the same. “Everything good in the world is kindness,” she once told The Guardian. “If you are not sure what you think about something, the most useful questions are these: Are you being kind? Are they being kind? That usually gives you the answer.”

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler

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