Why I’m the one writing this
I’m gay. My husband Chase and I travel as a couple, which means I’ve stood at a front desk while someone looked at the reservation, then at us, then back at the reservation. Nothing was said. Nothing had to be.
That pause is the whole thing. It isn’t danger and it isn’t a headline — it’s a small tax on the trip, paid at check-in, paid again at dinner, paid again when the driver asks which one of you is the husband. Most queer travelers I know have stopped noticing they’re paying it. They’ve just quietly built the habit of reading a room first and relaxing second.
You’re on vacation. You shouldn’t be doing fieldwork. So I do it first.
What I actually check
Not a rainbow in the window. Any hotel can buy one of those in June.
Who owns it, and who runs it
There’s a real difference between a property that will be polite to you and one that was built with you in mind — gay-owned, IGLTA-member, or simply run by a general manager with a track record I can point to. I’ll tell you which one you’re getting, because they’re not the same purchase.
The bed
One bed, booked as one bed, confirmed in writing as one bed. The “we’ve kindly upgraded you to two twins” conversation is not one anyone should be having at the start of a honeymoon, and it happens more than it should.
The neighborhood, on foot, at night
Not the postcard version and not the daytime version. Where the hotel actually sits, what the ten-minute walk back from dinner is like, and whether the address that looks central on a map is the one you want after dark.
The ground team
Drivers, guides, transfers, the private boat. A property can be flawless and a driver can undo it in fifteen minutes. When it matters, I brief the operator before you arrive — so nobody is surprised, and you never have to be the one doing the explaining.
Names and documents
Whose name is on the booking, whether it matches the passport, and whether that gap matters where you’re going. Unglamorous, occasionally the most useful thing I do, and much easier to handle eight weeks out than at a counter.
The room I’d put you in
Not just the right hotel — the right room in it. Away from the lobby bar, off the ground floor, the corner with the terrace. I book direct with the people who can actually make that happen, and it lands as a note in your file, not a hope.
Where I’ve written this in
Guides where the queer layer is already on the page — the properties, the neighborhoods, the honest caveats. Some are havens. Some are simply places I know how to place you well.
I’d rather have the hard conversation in my office than have you have it at check-in.
Two things I won’t do
I won’t sell you a flag as though it were research. A sticker on the door tells you what a marketing department approved. It doesn’t tell you who owns the building, who works the night desk, or what the street is like at eleven.
And I won’t tell you everywhere is fine. There are places I love that I would plan differently for you than I would for other clients — a different property, a different neighborhood, occasionally a different country in the same region for the same money and a better week. If somewhere you’ve set your heart on is somewhere I’d have real reservations about, you’ll hear that from me on the call, with my reasoning, in plain language. Then it’s your trip and your call. I’m not here to make that decision for you — I’m here to make sure you get to make it with everything I know.
Who this is for
Couples who want the honeymoon and not the negotiation. Friends taking a villa for a fortieth. Someone traveling alone who’d like a good room in the right part of town. Chosen family marking something that deserves marking. Anyone bringing parents, or bringing the in-laws, or bringing both. And anyone tired of the two things this industry usually offers queer travelers — a party, or a disclaimer.
One thing worth saying plainly: this isn’t a side door. It’s the same practice, the same taste, the same planning you’d get from me for anything else. The river cruise, the safari, the wine week in the Douro, the crossing on the Queen Mary 2 — all of that is here too, and I plan it for you exactly the way I’d plan it for anyone, with one extra layer of homework I do quietly and don’t bill you for.
Most of these trips are a honeymoon or a milestone by another name — how I plan those →︎. When it’s a birthday and eleven of your favourite people, that’s a group, and it has its own rules →︎.
The longer version of how I work, on any trip — the manifesto →︎