Honolulu isn’t a top market for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning travelers (LGBTQ+) yet, but Honolulu Pride helped to fill hotel rooms and restaurants and create sell-out crowds at supporting events that helped boost tourism in October, which is generally a softer travel month.
Ha‘aheo Zablan, general manager of the Kaimana Beach Hotel and board chair of the Hawai‘i LGBT Legacy Foundation, said organizers are still awaiting an official count but expect that the Honolulu Pride Parade on Saturday generated record attendance and that festival attendance that evening could rise above previous highs, too.
Hawai‘i LGBT Legacy Foundation’s Pride Celebrations started Thursday and ended Sunday. However, other events appealing to the LGBTQ+ community were held earlier this month, and there are more to come.
“Over the last 10 years, especially the last five years, there’s been a movement in showing more aloha and more care for the LGBTQ+ community,” Zablan said. “Here in Hawaii we are very liberal in that sense, and everyone understands that Hawaii is a welcoming place. Here at the Legacy Foundation, we are working to make it a destination (venue) for Pride. Over the last several years, we’ve increased participants for the parade and attendees at the festival, and next year we are looking to expand even more and make it a signature event.”
Joe Bock, partner/general manager at NMG Network and Hawai‘i LGBT Legacy Foundation advisory board member, said many larger cities hold Pride in June, but since 2016 Honolulu has benefited from the decision to move Pride to October.
“All of the major cities, like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, all have their Pride events in June,” Bock said. “It also allowed us to position Honolulu Pride as a destination since we weren’t competing with all of the other major cities that have Pride in June.”
Bock said another reason is that Hawaii’s visitor industry tends to be busier in June, and October is slower, so there are more hotel rooms and venues available.
Even so, Teri Orton, general manager of the Hawai‘i Convention Center, said one of her friends had difficulty finding a room in Waikiki during this year’s Pride, which she said boosted hotel occupancy and created a base of compression that helped hoteliers increase room rates.
Orton said the 39th Universal Show Queen: The Ultimate in Boy Beautiful, which was held Oct. 12 at the Hawai‘i Convention Center, also had sold-out attendance.
“We’ve probably held Show Queen here for the past 15 years, and it has kept growing,” she said. “It was sold out this year and has the potential to move into a bigger space in the future. The event was timed for Pride, and lots of people, including some of the contestants, traveled to see it. One of the contestants this year, Carmen San Diego, had a huge following.”
Zablan said Kaimana Beach Hotel was sold out this year and that many other Highgate Hawai‘i properties were at capacity.
“Highgate Hotels were one of the only ones that as a collective were actually really intentional about the way that they were supporting, rather it be discounted room rates or additional perks for travelers coming for Honolulu Pride — not just for those coming from the continent, but for kamaaina, too,” he said.
Some specials are still in the market. Hyatt Regency Waikiki is courting kamaaina travelers with a Pride in Paradise Staycation offer through Oct. 31. Kamaaina can use code PRDE24 to get a package that includes a $219 Waikiki city-view room and value-additions such as waived resort fee, complimentary self-parking, cocktails and breakfast for two.
Highgate’s ‘Alohilani Resort Waikiki Beach is offering a “Pride &Joy” room offer throughout October, which includes the resort fee as well as welcome drinks and amenities and complimentary self-parking. The Twin Fin, another Highgate property, is celebrating Pride all year long with a “Pride Is for Everyone” offer that provides 20 percent off the best available room rate.
Highgate Hawai‘i President Kelly Sanders said in a statement, “Honolulu Pride is a unique opportunity for our community to unite — not only to celebrate love and diversity but to engage and grow together. It serves as a powerful reminder of the strength that comes from unity and inclusion, and Highgate Hawai‘i is honored to be a part of this vibrant celebration.”
Hawaii’s visitor industry businesses also are courting the LGBTQ+ market by emphasizing diversity, equity and inclusion in their business practices, including how they treat their labor force, their guests and local nonprofits.
Zablan said Kaimana Beach partnered with the Hau Tree restaurant to sell a special cocktail, which supported the transgender community through the Hawai‘i Health and Harm Reduction Center’s Kua‘ana Project. He said other Highgate properties, including Romer House Waikiki and Romer Waikiki at the Ambassador, also offered drinks and specials to support local nonprofits.
The Renaissance Honolulu Hotel &Spa, which opened in February, is already Travel Proud Certified through Booking.com, the travel platform’s official way of making travel more inclusive for LGBTQ+ travelers.
Duke E. Ah Moo, Hilton vice president and commercial director of Hawaii and French Polynesia, said Hilton’s hotels are diverse by nature and inclusive by choice, and Hilton has earned a score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.
“Hilton is committed to a culture of inclusion for both guests and team members of every background, gender, sexual identity, ability, heritage and belief,” Ah Moo said in an email. “As Hawaii celebrates Pride this month, our hotels in Hawaii celebrate diversity, equity, and inclusion for both our guests and team members alike.”
Orton said diversity also is a huge pillar for the center manager, ASM Global, which has focused on supporting the LGBTQ+ community by ensuring that center employees are diverse and by serving as the venue for events like Show Queen. She added that she is seeing more meeting planners asking about DEI in the workplace than in the past.
The LGBTQ+ market has been evolving in Hawaii for some time. The Hawai‘i Tourism Authority in 2017 first brought the preferences, sentiments and profiles of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender travelers out of the closet with the release of the state’s first commissioned studies for this niche market by Community Marketing &Insights.
Daniel Naho‘opi‘i, who is now interim HTA president and CEO, said at the time that the studies confirmed “that Hawaii travel providers can benefit from more targeted marketing, new product offerings and a greater understanding as to what LGBTQ+ travelers are seeking when visiting Hawaii.”
HTA’s GoHawaii.com website has an LGBTQ+ landing page, which uses the marketing tagline, “Discover the breadth of beauty and diversity across each island. Anything can happen when you’re free to be yourself in Hawaii.”
While HTA has not commissioned an update from CMI, the company released its 17th annual LGBTQ Community Survey of 14,432 self-identified LGBTQ+ community respondents from the U.S. in June 2023, and in February released its 25th annual LGBTQ Tourism &Hospitality Survey, focused on data gleaned from an online survey of 5,025 self-identified members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Destination priorities for travel from the middle to the end of 2023 reflected the slowdown that Hawaii has seen in the U.S. market as a whole after the end of the post-COVID-19 revenge travel period. CMI President and founder Thomas Roth said some 77 percent of LGBTQ+ survey respondents planned to travel within the mainland but that 19 percent were eyeing Europe, 11 percent Mexico, 9 percent the Caribbean, 9 percent Canada and only 7 percent Hawaii.
Still, there was some encouraging insight shared in a webinar by David Paisley, CMI senior research director, who said leisure travel from the LGBTQ+ market in the U.S. “has actually increased back to 2019 levels and above.”
Paisley said the U.S. LGBTQ+ travelers surveyed by CMI in the past 12 months had averaged 3.4 leisure trips, 2.5 trips to visit family and friends and 1.2 primarily business trips. They had averaged four round-trip flights and spent an average of 11 nights in a paid-accommodations venue.
Another trend that bodes well for Hawaii, which has an urban setting but a much smaller LGBTQ+ footprint than larger Pride destinations, is that LGBTQ+-specific infrastructure like neighborhoods and nightlife were less important than typical top reasons to visit a destination.
Some 80 percent of LGBTQ+ urban travelers said they wanted to experience a city’s restaurants/food scene, 70 percent wanted to visit museums, 66 percent wanted to to explore historical sites, 64 percent wanted to check out the city’s top attractions and 57 percent wanted to explore interesting neighborhoods.
