Monday, May 24, 2010

Expedia Launches New Gay Travel Site



Expedia has launched a new gay travel site featuring both domestic and international destinations and a broad assortment of gay-friendly hotels, events, festivals, and nightclubs, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans, Palm Springs, Provincetown, Puerto Vallarta, San Francisco, Toronto, South Florida, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris and London. Hotels are searchable within each destination.

“This page will simplify and improve the shopping and booking experience for LGBT customers. It was based on research illustrating the difficulty in finding LGBT-welcoming hotels, and our solution was vetted by a group of LGBT professionals at Expedia and a roundtable of gay travel community members," said Tim MacDonald, senior vice president and general manager, Expedia.com.

However, some say Expedia is a bit late to the game. Orbitz.com has been courting gay travelers since its inception and has always had a page devoted to LGBT travelers. Orbitz’ site offers a multitude of worldwide gay-friendly destinations and hotels, and is a national corporate partner with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). It has also been voted one of the best places to work, earning a perfect score of 100% from the HRC's Corporate Equaltiy Index in 2009.

Barney Harford, CEO of Orbitz.com, said in a statement, "At Orbitz, we truly "walk the talk" when it comes to being inclusive,” highlighting the facts that Orbitz scores a perfect 100 on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality index and that Orbitz is one of the only brands in the world with the words “gay and lesbian” on its homepage. 

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