“They seem to want to erase us.”
Florida’s statewide tourism promoter has removed a section on LGBTQ+ travel to the state from its consumer-facing website, reports the Associated Press.
The section of the website, which highlighted LGBTQ+ friendly establishments, activities, and lodging in destinations across Florida, has been taken down sometime in the past few months, the AP notes, as web scrapes of the site still show the section available as of April. A search query for LGBTQ+ activities and business in Florida still rendered results, and the site’s events calendar continues to include listings for LGBTQ+ events across the state. The site also continues to list travel interests such as “Family-Friendly,” “African-American Heritage Travel,” and “Hispanic Heritage” in the “Things to Do” section.
“It’s just disgusting to see this,” Keith Blackburn, who heads the Greater Fort Lauderdale LGBT Chamber of Commerce told AP. “They seem to want to erase us.”
Visit Florida is a private/public partnership that promotes tourism to the state. The agency receives public funds, and is expected to match those funds from tourism industry stakeholders. It’s worth noting that several tourism promoters for Florida cities, including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Orlando, and Tallahassee included LGBTQ+ sections on their websites, while Tampa Bay includes a section specific to its annual Pride celebration.
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Florida is not alone in not having a LGBTQ+ travel section on their statewide tourism website. Nearby Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana also appear to lack LGBTQ+ sections on their tourism websites, although cities like New Orleans and Atlanta maintain such sections.
Florida, however, has been the subject of travel warnings from gay rights, immigration rights, and Black advocacy organizations in response to several bills introduced in the state legislature, including those meant to prohibit discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools, limited medical care for transgender people, censor Black history taught in schools, and ban books on race and LGBTQ+ topics.
The LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Florida maintains its warning, saying that Florida “may not be a safe place to move to or visit.”
Many tourism promoters often include dedicated interest sections on their websites for LGBTQ+ individuals, family travelers, military travelers, Hispanic travelers, Black travelers, neurodivergent travelers, and travelers with disabilities, but there’s no standard for which groups may have specific sections. Many specific-interest travelers will find information on independently operated travel sites, rather than state-run ones.
Florida is a popular destination for leisure travelers of all stripes, and LGBTQ+ travelers in particular bound for cities with vibrant LGBTQ+ communities, particularly in South Florida. The state has one of the largest tourism industries in the United States, counting nearly 141 million visitors in 2023, who contributed more than $102 billion to the state’s economy.
According to a 2023 survey commissioned by the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA), a significant proportion of LGBTQ+ travelers perceived Florida to be unwelcoming to people like themselves, and nearly three-quarters said they were unlikely or very unlikely to visit Florida in the coming year. Seventeen percent of the participants in the survey had traveled to Florida in the preceding year, placing it third in popularity after California and New York. Overall, statewide travel has been down among surveyed LGBTQ+ travelers since 2019, but had increased in some Florida cities.
Visit Florida does not appear to have responded to any requests for comment from the various news outlets.
