New York City was the top destination for LGBT travelers in a travel and tourism study conducted by Community Marketing, Inc.
As the winter months quickly approach, winter vacation season is on many people's minds—but where to go?
For starters, the LGBT-certified market research and communications firm, Community Marketing Inc. (CMI), has released the results of its 14th annual LGBT tourism study, which looked at the most-visited destinations by LGBT travelers in the past year.
According to the study, the overall top destination for LGBT Americans is New York City. Of the 4,726 LGBT participants in the study, 32 percent visited the Big Apple in the past 12 months.
San Francisco and Las Vegas were the second and third most-visited destinations, with 27 and 26 percent of participants reporting visiting these cities, respectively. Chicago came in fourth with 25 percent, and Los Angeles/West Hollywood came in fifth with 24 percent of LGBT travelers visiting.
Although the rankings remained consistent from past years, the global economic slump led to most destinations seeing an overall decrease in LGBT travel, except Washington, D.C., which experienced more LGBT visits.
"Washington, D.C. was the only major city on our survey to see increased numbers of LGBT travelers," said David Paisley, senior research director at CMI. "We feel this is a combination of the excitement around the Obama inauguration and the dozens of high-profile LGBT events and fundraisers in Washington, D.C."
The study also looked at the leisure travel and business travel rankings of top destinations for separately, which suggested a slight disparity between where LGBT Americans travel for work versus pleasure. New York City remained at the top of the list for leisure travel, while Chicago topped the business travel rankings.
Interestingly, New York was the second most-visited destination for business travel, while Chicago came in fifth for leisure travel behind Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles/West Hollywood. Washington, D.C. was the third-ranked business travel destination, followed by San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Outside the United States, Toronto was the top Canadian destination for LGBT travelers, followed by Montreal and Vancouver.
Looking at individual segments within the LGBT community, the study found New York to be the top destination for gay men, and Las Vegas to be the favorite destination among lesbians. New York was found to be the top destination for LGBT adults 62 years and older as well as for LGBT young adults between the ages of 18 and 32.
"New York has been the number one destination in the CMI survey for a very long time, and there is no indication that this trend will change in the next few years," Paisley said. "New York is a great LGBT destination, and no doubt a top 10 city in the world, but it is also located in the center of a huge LGBT population—from Boston to Washington, D.C., where it is easy for LGBT community members to pop over to New York for a long weekend, and they do so in massive numbers."
