LGBT Tourism Is Still Resilient After a Year of Milestones and Setbacks

Despite the deaths of 49 people from a mass shooting at an Orlando, Florida gay nightclub earlier this month — the highest death toll for a mass shooting in modern U.S. history — lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender (LGBT) travelers still had reasons to celebrate this past week. Sunday, June 26 was the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that gave same-sex couples the Constitutional right to marry in all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. And last weekend President Obama announced the creation of Stonewall National Monument which will be the first U.S. National Park dedicated to honoring LGBT American history. Stonewall National Monument will become the U.S.'s 412th national park and the announcement coincides with the National Park Service's 100th Anniversary. The new monument and park will cover about eight acres including The Stonewall Inn in New York City's Greenwich Village, a gay bar that's considered the birthplace of the LGBT rights movement from riots that happened there and the surrounding neighborhood in June 1969. But many travel brands demonstrated dedication to LGBT travelers long before the U.S. government decided to support same-sex marriage or create a national park. Brands like Marriott International, American Airlines, and the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau, for example, have been marketing to this community for two decades. This year Marriott International brought back Ross Matthews and added Laverne Cox, an Emmy-nominated transgender actress from "Orange is the New Black," as official ambassadors for its #LoveTravels campaign. Cox is one of only a handful of transgender people in history to be chosen as brand or campaign ambassadors, both in and outside of the travel industry. Seve