Safari Experiences See Opportunity With More LGBTQ+ Families

25.08.2023 - 13:54 / skift.com / Travel Experiences / Selene Brophy

The default perception for the LGBTQ+ travel market brings to mind Pride parades and dance festivals that resonate with gay solo travelers or same-sex couples. 

However, it couldn’t be further from the emerging trend of LGBTQ+ family travel, said David Ryan, founder and CEO of Rhino Africa and Out2Africa, a bespoke LGBTQ+ tour operator based in South Africa.

Ryan, who has been in the safari industry for more than 19 years, told Skift that it’s something he has noted, even as revenge luxury travel and multi-gen travel saw same-sex couples spending in excess of $23,000 on a 10-day, multi-stop experience across Southern and Eastern Africa during 2022, for example. 

Out2Africa chief of sales officer Waathiq Hilton said while the company does not specifically breakout its bookings data into LGBTQ+ families, as it does specifically with same-sex couples, the average booking data for 2022 showed a 40 percent increase of LGBTQ+ travel overall, when compared to 2019, with an average booking value for the period sitting at $13 600 for a 12-day trip.

Hilton said the traction for Out2Africa’s LGBTQ+ curated offering has gained significant traction compared to 2019, with the company’s recovery marketing budget seeing visitors to its platform exceed forecast projections by 40 percent, to reach 140 percent.

“Our conversion of visitors to our platform to actual dropped enquiries, and then enquiries to bookings has also seen a 50 percent increase against 2019’s performance.

“This tells us confidence in traveling to Africa from the LGBTQ+ community has increased. Previously there was high interest, but they were not ready to commit. We saw high visitor volume but low conversion, but this has changed over the last three to four years, with an increase in visitors who not only make an inquiry but then book travel with us,” said Hilton.

Ryan added that LGBTQ+ family travel is an “emerging trend that is the complete opposite of the previous stereotype for gay solo or couple travel.”

“It never before encompassed traveling families. This speaks to the progressive side of surrogacy laws,” he added, as more same-sex couples chose to expand their families by having surrogate pregnancies or children through adoption.

Even more counter-intuitive to this emerging trend is the harsh anti-gay law passed by the Southern African country Uganda on Tuesday, said to protect the family values of Ugandans. Seen as one of the world’s strictest laws criminalizing homosexuals with the death penalty for certain offences, and further making those aware of homosexual tendencies or behavior accomplices to this alleged crime.

Dubbed the “2023 Anti-Homosexuality Bill,” Amnesty International urged Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to veto the law