LGBTQ Pavilions at Travel & Adventure Shows

For 2025, I will organize and run the LGBTQ Pavilion at the Travel & Adventure Show in New York (Jan 25-26) and Washington D.C. (Mar 29-30). We offer sponsorships, booth spaces, special LGBTQ-Pavilion only tables, stage opportunities and more! Email at ed@edsalvato.com for more information.

Here I am on Fox’s DC affiliate promoting the 2024 DC Pavilion

Help you identify and meet your challenges & opportunities in the LGBTQ travel segment.

Every tourism and hospitality brand has both opportunities and challenges in the LGBTQ travel space. LGBTQ travelers come in all configurations and there’s a great deal of diversity within this segment. This is especially true for younger millennials and Gen Z. They want you to treat them respectfully; to recognize and respect their relationships; and to understand their increasing gender diversity; and treat them with the same respect you accord all your guests. They may even use pronouns other than he or she. I’ve been in this business since 1998 helping tourism & hospitality brands understand and market to this evolving segment. I’m known for helping the travel industry understand and engage with this audience in a clear, engaging manner with humor and respect.

What are the assumptions your executive team and customer-facing staff makes about this segment that may steer you wrong? What are the basics you need to learn to effectively market and ensure the safety and enjoyment of your LGBTQ guests?

My Services

Edify: Education for All Your Teams

Learn best practices for reaching out to LGBTQ travelers, suppliers, partners & press/influencers and keeping them safe when they arrive at your hotel, attraction, cruise, tour and experience. For a marketing plan to succeed, you have to get the buy in at all levels of your organization from the C-Suite and marketing teams to customer-facing staff, and even key outside stakeholders like the marketing committee of your board of directors. You want your efforts with this segment to be seen as important and valued as your other efforts rather than a one-off or a pet project of someone on your team. These are inspiring/engaging MasterClasses tailored to your needs and level.

Tourism + Hospitality Marketing

LGBTQ travelers represent a highly desirable segment to tourism and hospitality brands with travel behaviors and levels of spend that outpace most other segments. I can help you understand the important characteristics, behaviors and spending habits of the LGBTQ segment that is valued by so many leading brands. We’ll work together to design a smart marketing plan to authentically connect with the segments of this market that make the most sense for your brand. Work with me to bring in proven outside expertise to plan the right approach to this segment. (In other words, don’t rely on the gay guy in IT!)

Getting Conferences LGBTQ Ready

Conference and other business meeting organizers need to completely relearn how to attract and engage with modern, diverse delegates, exhibitors and suppliers. Are you ready for conference attendees who use pronouns other than he or she or need gender neutral bathrooms? Do you have content tailored for LGBTQ delegates as well as other diverse guests? Are you responding to RFPs with best practice in accommodating LGBTQ delegates? Are your information forms, printed badges and other materials gender inclusive and able to accommodate those who use pronouns other than he or she and honorifics other than the familiar ones? Do your sponsors understand the types of video and other assets they should present at the conference? I can help you understand how to run an inclusive and successful conference. I also have lots of contacts among excellent, dynamic and diverse speakers, emcees, hosts and more around the world.

Inclusive hospitality training

You‘ve marketed to LGBTQ travelers and guests, and guess what? They show up! I can help you understand what to expect and how to keep them safe. I have assembled simple but powerful real-world scenarios that we work through together as a group that help hospitality providers understand the ways LGBTQ and nonbinary travelers may feel unwelcome and unsafe. For a much deeper dive into LGBTQ-ready hospitality training, I also work with HospitableMe and offer their signature Everyone Welcome hospitality training module. Ask me for details.

Helping creative and other agencies pitch tourism clients

I help creative agencies, advertising agencies and other media companies understand the basics of general tourism in order to pitch destinations, hotels and other travel brands. I recently helped a creative agency pitch its first ever potential tourism client (a destination). The pitch went so well, he wrote me back to say, “the sessions with you were priceless!” (I am happy to discuss this and other recent examples with you confidentially.

Clients

I’ve worked with Visit Philadelphia, NYC & Company, Discover Puerto Rico, Greater Fort Lauderdale, AIG, Enjoy Illinois, Uniworld, Atlantis, Visit Monaco, Czech Tourism, Marriott, Out in the Vineyard, NY Times Travel Show, Travel & Adventure Show, Boston Globe Travel Show, Tuscany Tourism, the 1st LGBTQ+ Wedding Congress (in Venice, Italy).

Wait! There’s more …

I am also a sought after public speaker, published author, LGBTQ travel safety trainer and instructor at New York University. teaching tourism and hospitality-related courses and a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin’s New York City Center teaching marketing. (To engage me as a speaker at your next conference or meeting, visit this page.) Connect with me via email at ed@edsalvato.com so we can discuss your challenges and opportunities in the LGBTQ travel space.

University Professor

I’m also an adjunct instructor at NYU School of Tourism and Hospitality currently teaching customer relationship management and other classes since 2018. I’m also a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin’s NYC Campus as of 2021. And as of 2023, I am a marketing professor at Campus, a new online community college program that’s dedicated to affordability, access, and quality support in higher education.

Education

Harvard University: BS in applied mathematics and economics
Northeastern University: MBA with focus on market research.

A FEW ADDITIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

Launched ManAboutWorld in 2012, the world’s first gay travel magazine for iPad only and HospitableMe, a consulting brand specializing in strategy, content marketing and hospitality & tourism training with Billy Kolber.
Editor in chief of The Out Traveler, the world’s largest magazine catering to gays and lesbians, with 220,000 subscribers.
Editorial director for all travel media at PlanetOut Inc and Regent Media, including The Out Traveler, OutTraveler.com, GPS.OutTraveler.com, Advocate Magazine, Advocate.com/travel, Gay.com/travel, PlanetOut.com/travel, and Alyson Books’ series of Out Traveler Travel Guides (printed books); and he was travel editor for Out Magazine and a contributing editor at Out.com/travel.
Editor in chief of OUT & ABOUT and OutandAbout.com which was published from 1992 to 2003. OUT & ABOUT was considered THE standard of gay travel and was the leading voice of gay travel for most of its long life. Ed helped write, edit and update over 150 travel guides which were delivered for a fee from the website OutandAbout.com.
Regular on-air, call-in radio spot on Sirius OutQ on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio with Derek and Romaine.
Speaks frequently about LGBTQ travel and travel safety at mainstream and LGBTQ travel-related events around the world.
Download my CV/resume here.

I’m considered one of THE world’s leading authorities on LGBTQ Travel. In fact, I wrote the book!

The Handbook of LGBT Tourism and Hospitality

I literally wrote the book on this subject: The award-winning Handbook of LGBT Tourism and Hospitality: A Guide for Business Practice, which was a 2017 Foreword Indie finalist! Check it out here.

Check out my award-winning book, the Handbook of LGBT Tourism and Hospitality: A Guide for Business Practice, at Columbia University Press and buy it on Amazon.