Opinion by Pablo de Luca and Gustavo Noguera, founders of the Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce Argentina.
It is giving something that is natural. Five years ago we started to work a market that already existed, gay consumers, but what came to do was to enable companies to begin to communicate directly and capture the segment. And the work begins to show results: a sample is the call of the opening ceremony of the 4th Conference on LGBT Marketing and Tourism, where he was attended by over 600 companies.
Only the Argentine market has a spending power of 33 billion dollars a year, so there are already many entrepreneurs interested in training to sell the gay segment.
Equal Marriage Act enhanced the Gay Tourism in Argentina, and year-end we have more certainty about the real results. Taking conservative numbers, provided by the Entity of Tourism of the City of Buenos Aires two years ago had 17.8 percent of arrivals Gay and Lesbian, and if we transport this data to 5.3 million arrivals in 2010, we over 900 thousand tourists LGBT segment. In this sense, according to the World Tourism Organization, Tourism Meeting after the LGBT tourism is the activity that has a higher projected growth over the next five years.
The City of Buenos Aires is now in first place in the LGBT tourism of high quality. A Marketing Boutique survey that analyzes the ABC1 gay tourism around the world, people earning more than $ 140,000 to the world, indicates that both the United States, Canada and Europe, the Federal Capital elect as prime holiday destination .
The Argentine businessman has to keep in mind that while one of the segments are more difficult to grasp, we are also loyal customers and that further expenditure in the tourism category. Almost all statistics in the world speak of a flat travel doubled compared to heterosexual tourists.
Recently, a businesswoman from Ibiza told us “you are just starting to see the tip of the iceberg.” It is true, slowly begins to professionalize the staff training is awareness in companies that not only put the flag and say that he is “gay-friendly”. It is going down the track in Argentina, and an example of that are major operators that have chosen the segment before others, and take it seriously, internal training and preparing teams to enter the market. Today large companies have lost their fear that they will deal with the gay tourism.
For any entrepreneur who wants to enter the market are fundamental pillars: Investigate what the competition and know what inclusion policies are handled within the company itself because they are a mirror of how you treat customers, train, because the fact being gay does not make you able to work segment, often outperform companies 100 percent heterosexual, which is professionally trained to work on this and devise a strategy that focuses on a niche within a niche using all tools available.
