Being 'gay friendly' in business?
I was on LinkedIn when i came across this article from one of our Travel Business Partners and i just had to share as this is personally related to me and travel. I want everyone to be safe when travelling and some have it easier than others.
Thank you: Sarah Pearce - Travelshoot Founder.
Earlier this year, I faced what I thought was a very easy business decision.
One of our overseas photographers had received a customer booking request from us, and in our customer detail the photographer was informed that the couple was a lesbian couple and they were booking a Travelshoot in one of their favourite European cities.
Within a few hours, from the other side of the world, our team received a rejection from the photographer on the job citing they didn’t work with homosexual clientele.
This was the first time this had ever happened, so the team asked me what to do.
It didn’t even take me 10seconds to think about it – the answer was simple wasn’t it? “Please tell the photographer they are no longer on the network, we are absolutely a company that works with all clients” end of story. Simple.
Later that day, one of our own Travelshoot team members is gay and had heard about what happened. He asked me if I had ever considered putting that we are a ‘gay friendly’ service on our website. I had no bloody idea what this even meant, and asked him ‘was that even a thing?’ He then went on to explain to me that when he travels, particularly in some parts of the world, he and his partner do sometimes check websites for hotels or tours to see they have the ‘gay friendly’ noted (there’s even a little icon that means that too?) When I asked him why he did this, he explained that on a couple of occasions when checking into hotels around the world, him and his partner had been declined to check in and were not welcome in the hotel.
I WAS DUMBFOUNDED.
I felt so naïve and sheltered in my own little world where I have the luxury as a heterosexual, that this is something I’ve never even had to think about. I also felt angry and upset that this was even ‘a thing’ and that when he showed me other websites that advertised ‘gay friendly’ that this was even mentioned at all?
Later that day I chose not to do anything to our website, nor to our customer or photographer policy, and to my relief this situation has never happened again. When we recruit photographers, we are very up front to say that we are about creating memories for EVERY type of customer, whether that be a family, a couple or even a solo traveller. And I’m not going to instruct my team to go into any further detail – it’s for everyone, and that’s that.
As Australia faces the upcoming verdict on whether gay marriage in our country is legalized, I can only hope that more founders and businesses are as excited as we are. It saddens me that this vote is even a ‘thing’ just like having to consider noting ‘gay friendly’ on a website is a thing, but at least when we’re one step closer to equality situations like this will start to be a 'thing' of the past.