EDGE Chicago

Accor Hotels recently launched RainbowSelection.com, a global hotel-locating website for lesbian and gay travelers who wish to spend their gay dollars in hotels that authentically invite their patronage.

While the site lists just over 100 hotels around the world, the selection of hotels is continuously growing. The largest number of listings is in central and western Europe, but "the site will continue to grow substantially over the next weeks, particularly in North America, South America, and Australia," according to Jeff Wahl, managing director of Communigayte, a leading full-service LGBT marketing agency which issued a press release about RainbowSelection.com.

This new site is bright and clean, using plenty of white space so the site feels calm; it’s also incredibly easy to navigate and serves up plenty of picturesque images. It features a news feed with updates on events worldwide. While the hotels listed are mostly those in the Accor family of brands, like Mercure, Novotel, and Sofitel, they are all hotels that have specifically reached out to LGBT travelers.

Accor has a long record of supporting the LGBT community as a sponsor of leading international LGBT travel and business associations, including IGLTA.org. Many of the properties included in RainbowSelection.com support worthy local LGBT health and social cause.

Accor, among the top hotel groups in the world, is in some ways ahead of its competitors in gathering their properties around the world with specific LGBT offers in one easy-to-use website. Other top hotel groups in the world have made efforts to reach out to LGBT travelers. Hyatt Hotels and Resorts rounds up Hyatt properties with specific offers to LGBT travelers.

Marriott Hotels and Resorts offers a gay landing page with occasional specials and offers but it does not yet include links to specific properties that offer LGBT specials.

Two of the world’s leading hotel marketing groups offer gay-specific hotel information in a slightly different format, including Leading Hotels of the World with its Pride Page; and Preferred Hotel Group though the hotel properties themselves aren’t part of their separate website.

The decidedly unglamorous website Purpleroofs.com is trip-planning tool that’s been around for a very long time and includes lodging options the world over from small to large. Damron, a trusted source in gay travel information for decades, has a huge database of frequently updated lodging options (among many other types of businesses catering to the LGBT market), but you have to become a subscriber, an approach that severely limits access to the information by most of the world’s gay travelers.

The major online travel agencies each feature an LGBT section, which help many travelers identify and book at gay-friendly hotels. Examples include Orbitz; Travelocity; and Expedia.