The importance of LGBTQ sensitivity and sales training

I didn’t get any photos of myself talking but my friends at Proud Experiences did, and they even quoted me! “You can’t provide personalized service to LGBTQ people if you don’t understand us.

For more information about the services we provide at HospitableMe please review the information on our website, highlighted below.

Strategy
Diverse travelers are shaping the future of travel in profound ways. LGBTQ travelers have been a highly profitable niche for many years — today they are even more important, as the way they are represented, welcomed and treated can brand a destination as modern, progressive and desirable to a much broader population of future customers.

As advocates for suppliers and consumers, our work starts with strategy to bridge where your business is today, to where it needs to be to welcome diverse travelers of all kinds in the future. With a keen understanding of the financial, political and community implications for tourism businesses, our recommendations are smart, creative, and actionable.

• Identify LGBTQ challenges, opportunities and market potential for your business
• Create consumer-facing marketing and communications plans
• Create action plans for destinations and brands that can’t openly market to LGBTQ
• Leverage marketing, communications and training efforts to transform local service culture and increase welcome for diverse travelers of all kinds.

Marketing
With LGBTQ travel related spending reaching US $211 billion annually, there’s great value in target marketing to segments of the community. And there’s even more value in leveraging LGBTQ marketing and communications to reach allies and younger travelers. Many of our clients have strategic goals that go beyond increasing visitation by LGBTQ travelers. We help create communications programs that share a broader message about diversity and inclusion to position destinations and brands as modern, progressive and welcoming. We develop content marketing that leverages LGBTQ voices to elevate and align discussion around new and lesser known products, services and attributes. And we deliver LGBTQ consumers through programs on our own media (ManAboutWorld), third-party platforms including facebook and LGBTQ media, and your own platforms.

Training
We empower customer-facing professionals to engage with LGBTQ customers in authentic, intuitive and personalized ways. Our destination, company, and role-specific training provides knowledge and tools that enable

• Understanding of LGBTQ specific issues and mindsets
• Comfortable and confident connections with LGBTQ guests
• Delivery of personalized, anticipatory service to diverse guests of all kinds

Our consumer travel-focused background is a unique advantage in understanding how diversity issues play out in real-world scenarios and building practical, meaningful competency among staff.  Our onsite trainings are customized to your specific service paradigms and delivered to small groups of up to 25 employees per session. Friendly, interactive, and emotionally resonant, our sessions explore how ingrained notions of gender, sexual orientation and relationship status have shaped service paradigms, and how stripping away preconceptions and bias allows more engaged and authentic hospitality for all guests. By helping employees understand LGBTQ guests, they become more inclined to engage rather than retreat from interaction with them.