From Risks to Resilience: Practical Steps for Inclusive LGBTQ+ Travel in the future
Summary
This panel session at ITB Berlin, titled 'From Risks to Resilience: Practical Steps for Inclusive LGBTQ+ Travel in the Future,' brought together experts from A3M Global Monitoring, HBX Group, Grindr, and medical/wellness tourism to examine the current state of LGBTQ+ travel safety and practical strategies for building more inclusive tourism businesses. Marcel Conrad of A3M Global Monitoring opened with a data-driven keynote presenting their annual LGBTQ+ Risk Map — developed in collaboration with Diversity Tourism and ITB Berlin over the past two-plus years — which uses a five-tier color-coded system to assess both legal and societal conditions for LGBTQ+ travelers globally. Key statistics shared: 168 countries have significant or severe discrimination and prosecution; 78 countries criminalize same-sex acts and/or transgender identity; 59 countries impose prison sentences on LGBTQ+ individuals; 12 countries have legal frameworks allowing the death penalty; and 8 countries impose corporal punishment.
Conrad emphasized that legalistic frameworks alone are insufficient — local knowledge, real travel experience, and lived expertise are essential. He announced an initiative to build an LGBTQ+ Travel Security Portal and network of local experts. Seth Baron from Grindr (15 million monthly active unique users in 190 countries) described the platform's safety-first approach, including a landmark partnership with the IOC at the Milan-Cortina Olympics where Grindr geo-fenced the Olympic Village to enable premium safety features — disabled automatic location sharing, enabled disappearing messages, blocked screenshots — for all athletes regardless of their home country's legal status.
Baron noted that approximately 30% of Grindr users at any moment are exploring destinations outside their home or are more than 50 miles away, making travel a massive platform use case. He also called out an untapped commercial opportunity: LGBTQ+ travelers overindex on brand loyalty, spending, and every key marketer metric, yet most travel brands are not actively advertising to them. Dr.
Prem Jagyasi highlighted that the LGBTQ+ community spends 23% more than average travelers in the US, 70% hold passports (vs. 40% of the general US population), and Thailand's LGBTQ+ tourism generates $4–5 billion annually — while neighboring Asian countries remain closed despite massive economic opportunity. Japan was cited as a notable case: it does not legally recognize same-sex marriage but does not actively oppose LGBTQ+ events, representing a middle-ground positioning that still leaves the $200 billion Japanese economy and the $3.
7 trillion Asian tourism ecosystem largely untapped. Carlota Galván Bisbal from HBX Group discussed how their 'Care Destinations' initiative, developed in partnership with Queer Destinations, embeds LGBTQ+ inclusion into ESG frameworks at a corporate level. She stressed that inclusion must start with leadership awareness, followed by measurable feedback from employees, travelers, and suppliers, and then strategic alliances with community-specialist organizations.
Thomas Bömkes moderated and emphasized that local LGBTQ+ community members are the most reliable source of ground-truth travel safety information — more valuable than government policies or official advisories.
Key Takeaways
- •A3M Global Monitoring's LGBTQ+ Risk Map classifies 168 countries as having significant or severe discrimination and prosecution, 78 criminalize same-sex acts or transgender identity, 59 impose prison sentences, 12 allow the death penalty, and 8 use corporal punishment — yet foreign tourists are rarely subject to the harshest penalties, with deportation being far more common than imprisonment.
- •Marcel Conrad (A3M): purely legalistic country ratings miss the real picture — local experts within LGBTQ+ communities who navigate high-risk environments daily are the most accurate and practical source of traveler-specific safety intelligence, and this is the basis for A3M's new LGBTQ+ Travel Security Portal initiative.
- •Seth Baron (Grindr): approximately 30% of Grindr's 15 million monthly active users are traveling or exploring destinations more than 50 miles from home at any given moment, making it a core travel platform — and brands are massively underutilizing it as an advertising channel to reach the most loyal, high-spending segment of travelers.
- •Grindr's Milan-Cortina Olympics partnership with the IOC used precise latitude/longitude geo-fencing of the Olympic Village to automatically activate premium safety features — disabled location sharing, disappearing messages, screenshot blocking — for all users inside the village regardless of their country of origin, setting a model for event-level LGBTQ+ safety activations.
- •In countries classified in red or dark-red (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Tanzania, Malaysia), Grindr automatically suppresses advertising and instead pushes safety reminder messages to users — a policy-driven editorial approach to user protection in hostile legal environments.
- •Dr. Prem Jagyasi: LGBTQ+ travelers in the US spend 23% more than average travelers, 70% of the LGBTQ+ community holds a passport versus only 40% of the general US population, making them significantly more travel-propensed and higher-value as a customer segment.
- •Thailand's LGBTQ+ tourism generates $4–5 billion annually while neighboring Asian countries remain effectively closed — Dr. Prem framed this as a massive missed opportunity given Asia's $3.7 trillion tourism ecosystem and Japan's $200 billion economy, where same-sex marriage is still not legally recognized despite no active suppression of LGBTQ+ events.
Transcript
I'm very excited to introduce a very good friend of ITB Berlin. It is he has been a great supporter of this particular track for a number of years. It is the wonderful Thomas Buma of diversity tourism and Thomas will be moderating the next session which is titled from risk to resilience practical steps for inclusive LGBTQ plus travel in the future. And we needs more we need more inclusivity. So I'm delighted to bring Thomas to the stage and he will introduce his wonderful panel to you all. Thoma...
