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THE PRESS/Stacy Squires
They love travelling, are affluent and spend freely, and are gay. Are Kiwi businesses doing enough to exploit the pink dollars spent by gay travellers? DAVID KING reports.
Street postie by day, bed and breakfast host by night, Bruce Morrison is an entrepreneur who has turned his sexual orientation to his advantage.
He opened his gay bed and breakfast just over two years ago, and is doing well enough to turn it into a full-time job, although he is reluctant to give up his postie round just yet.
Morrison and three other gay businesses set up the gaystay New Zealand website less than two years ago.
It has gone from four listings to 65.
"I could give up work now but I find it is a job that I can combine well with being a postie."
He hosts the travellers at night, sets up breakfast and then leaves for his round. He is back by lunch time to make up the rooms in the afternoon for the next round of guests.
"I like to keep it the way New Zealanders are – relaxed and laid back."
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READY TO SERVE: Bruce Morrison, the owner of
a gay bed and breakfast, prepares to make guests welcome. Gay tourism is becoming a big earner as businesses chase the pink dollar.
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The B&B is the first business Morrison has run.
"I'm 55 – I've always had bosses," he says.
"I was excited to start something for myself – I just love it."
He has had only one guest not pay, but that was because the guest had come to the end of his budget and was sick of sleeping in backpacker dorms with 10 other people. He can recall only one other difficult guest – who stayed only one night – in a busy two years.
He says he cannot see a downside as a gay tourist operator.
"I'm out – there's no consequences for me. It's only positive."
He says gay men have money to spend because they do not usually have family and there are a lot of wealthy gay travellers out there.
While some hotels have switched into the market and advertise themselves as gay friendly – and he applauds them for doing it – gay-owned accommodation has the edge, he says.
"They want to stay with ordinary New Zealanders. They want to meet gay New Zealanders and find out what life is like here."
The bed and breakfast format – where you are staying in what is essentially someone's home – works.
They don't want to just stay at a big hotel which says it is gay friendly, but has a "straight" person behind the counter, he says.
And the great thing for him, as the host, is that he understands his guests.
"The big advantage of having gay people stay is that I feel that I know half of their life story anyway, before they've even walked in."
He says he is now as busy as he could be, with guests staying solidly from the middle of December to the middle of March.
"I spend more time chatting to people than I do changing the beds."
Some two hours north of Auckland near the town of Waipu, Rosemary Neave is busy running Waihoihoi Lodge, a women's country retreat.
She says business is good, but points out there are big differences between the lesbian and gay markets.
"In my opinion the gay male market is much more lucrative, but then there's more people chasing the gay dollar.
"The difference between the gay women's market and the gay men's is that lesbians are happy to hang out with other women whether they are straight or not.
"Gay men just want to hang out with gay men."
Neave says she does not target the pink dollar in a narrow sense.
"We thought we would go for the pink dollar initially and we spent a lot of money advertising for that market. But we also went for all women. We didn't want to be too narrow about it."
She has three targets – lesbians, women travelling on their own and girls' weekends away.
For women on their own it is a non-threatening environment. And the place is a hit with the girly weekend crowd and even has an embroidery group that returns each year to stay.
Two gay men who stayed were so impressed they have bought a neighbouring property and are building a gay bed and breakfast. The idea is to work in with the lodge for bigger groups.
She says you cannot go into the business thinking that just because you are gay you are going to win the market and be a success.
All the usual rules of business apply regardless of the sexual orientation of your target market.
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"You can't just put a sign up and say `Gay people welcome'. You have to spend money and do things well. It's not a quick slide into fast bucks, the gay dollars are not just floating around out there ready to attach themselves to the rainbow on your letterbox."
Neave is internet savvy. She also runs
womentravel. co.nz website and is hoping to take the success of
womentravel. co.nz to the rest of the world.
She is working on womentraveltheworld. info – a website for women through- out the world to find women- friendly places to stay.
So while the accommodation sector appears to be in fine fettle, capturing the pink dollar is harder work for other tourist operators.
Hamilton limousine service operator John Rendle has been running Rainbow Tours, a gay and lesbian group tour service, since the late 1990s.
He says the high dollar has hurt the market, keeping it as a definite sideline to mainstream work.
"We would starve if the only business we went for was gay and lesbian tours."
The realities of the business are familiar to Wellington tourist operator Chris
McKellar, described by one operator as "Mr Gay Tourism".
McKellar has been pushing gay tourism for 20 years but he says the industry is now going backwards.
McKellar says bickering within the community and the ups and downs of getting successful gay events off the ground have taken their toll.
He believes Christchurch should have a showpiece gay event, like Auckland's Hero Parade, to pull in the punters.
While there is a gay ski festival in Queenstown he would like to see a bigger version at Mount
Hutt, capitalising on Christchurch's scale and infrastructure.
Beautiful scenery is fine, but gay tourists need more.
"In the gay and lesbian tourism market events bring the tourists."
McKellar says Auckland has Hero – despite its financial problems – and the Wellington City Council will "support anything that's gay and lesbian".
But then there's Christchurch. The gateway to the South Island has a good infrastructure in terms of gay bars and places to stay, but no big drawcard event.
McKellar has been doing the numbers and estimates the pink tourism market could be worth – conservatively – at least $150m a year to New Zealand.
But he points out there is plenty of competition with 41 other countries promoting themselves as gay-friendly destinations.
To the affluent gay community, New Zealand is seen as tolerant as well as a beautiful place to visit. McKellar says the gay community has only itself to blame for not cashing in.
"It's a business – there is money there ... I'm tearing my hair out – why can't we exploit this?"
He says that with the right people in tourism, the industry would really "hum".
That includes people such as Christchurch's Morrison.
"If we had a few more people like Bruce things would really happen."
McKellar's dream is to one day see an industry big enough to support a gay and lesbian tourism awards show, and maybe there could be a gay and lesbian campervan company with a fleet of pink vehicles travelling the country. |
