Take Autostraddle’s Very Exciting LGBTQ+ Travel Survey!

Next month I’m giving a presentation at a Lesbian & Gay Travel Marketing conference and as I sat down to consider the pressing reality of this commitment and the looming deadline for me to turn in my draft, I thought, you know what would really help me with this? If I knew more about how y’all travel!

And then, of course, the more I thought about it, the more I decided this would be great information to have about you in general, especially as we perhaps eventually consider expanding the A-Camp wing of our business in the future. It’ll be great material for lists and articles, and also for helping us understand what kind of coverage you want in the world and what kind of human beings you are.

There’s questions about traveling for weddings, about your travel experiences as an LGBTQ+ person and/or a POC and/or a disabled person, about what you do when you travel, where you like to stay — so many things I’d like to know about you! (I’m not done analyzing the Lesbian Stereotypes Survey, don’t worry)

Here’s the survey: you should take it!

Also if you had fun taking this one, you should ALSO take The Community Marketing Survey on this exact topic! There are two questions I snagged from their survey and adapted for this one, but the rest of it is pretty different, and they’ll give us the results of all the Autostraddlers who took the survey when it wraps up in December, so.

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Riese

Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3251 articles for us.

21 Comments

  1. Initially I thought this survey would be the community marketing survey because I know y’all are trying to push that one but two surveys is (at least) twice the fun!

    • I know me too! lol I misread this article and was thinking to myself “hmmm didn’t they already publicize that travel survey?” Thanks Riese for twice the fun!!

  2. I haven’t clicked the link yet so I have no idea if this is one of the survey questions, but if you, Riese, my boss, have ever wondered, “wow I wonder if Vanessa would like to be sent on press trips to write about them for Autostraddle dot com,” the answer to that question is a hearty YES I WOULD LOVE THAT RIESE! I’m sure that’s the exact kind of queer travel data you’re looking for, so I am happy to make my thoughts and feelings known.

    …ok in all seriousness I’ll go take the survey now. XOXO.

  3. Wow, I only travel for queer friends, food, Muppet exhibits, and A Camp; which describes me and my priorities quite accurately.

  4. v excited to see what shenanigans us queers do outside the home, by plane train and automobile, etc etc

  5. For someone who rarely travels, I spent a lot more than 15 minutes on this survey. You’re welcome and I’m so sorry

  6. Only vaguely related but I’m going to do SO MUCH traveling next year, when I quit my job. On foot, by bike, and hitch-hiking, because no job = no money. The thought that I’m leaving in the spring is sustaining me through the winter and I thank any mention of travel that reminds me it’ll come.

  7. Hi !
    For a couple of weeks I’ve seen the term “femme of center” emerging (mostly on @_personals_)
    I tried to Google it to understand what it means and where is it from and found nothing.
    And here, on this very survey, Q.79 you asked about gender presentation on a scale from masculine of center to feminine of center.
    The term MoC is often used, but what about FoC, is it quite new ?
    Did I miss something.
    Answering a survey never brought me so many new questions. ?

  8. Why is there no budget question? Do you expect your demographic of young queer people to have money to travel? Can all of us get passports?

    • Can’t you just get a passport in the US? How much does one have to pay for one?
      Are there other countries where you don’t automatically* get one as soon as you reach legal age? Which ones?
      *automatically meaning bureaucracy and some fees involved, of course.
      As to budget, I’m really interested about that elsewheres,too. I feel that it was at the same time easier and harder to travel as a college student.

      • I’m in the US and just got a passport. It was about $200. And it’s a lot more if you need to get one fast. A friend spent $700 to get one in a few days. Mine took a few weeks to arrive in the mail.

      • yeah getting a passport is expensive!

        i’m not sure what you’re asking in this initial question though — i do ask about your household income. i didn’t like, book you a trip and venmo you a request for half the plane fare, i just asked if you’d taken a plane recently. i didn’t say “do you have a valid passport? because if not, you should get one, it’s free!” i know that money is a reason someone might not have one.

        honestly most marketing surveys ask a lot of questions about specific amounts of money you spend on this or that, but i’ve always found those questions really stressful, and calculating that shit makes my brain hurt and then i have no energy left to answer the other questions. i want this survey to be fun! so i put in a lot of open-ended questions where ppl could talk about money or not. i even saved income for the end because i wanted it to not turn people off.

        i know people feel money questions are invasive, so i didn’t really see the point in it. i essentially assume that how often someone travels is tied closely to how much money they have, that’s sort of underlying everything else that is asked about.

        when it comes to pricing AS events, we always make them literally as cheap as we possibly can, not one penny more, b/c we want a diverse group of attendees and know that the more expensive it is, the more homogenous the group will become. and often that means making our events too cheap, like we did this year and aaahhhh it’s been quite a ride

  9. This was fun! I love to travel, but I’ve mostly been tethered to grad school these past few years. Now that I’m finished I want to visit lots of cool new places. I still use the Autostraddle city guides to find queer stuff in the area

  10. I love to travel so this was right up my alley! I also spent way longer than 15 minutes on it, and wrote a lot in the optional boxes. Just warning you! I’m going to take the Community Marketing one now too!

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