Benidorm prides itself on gay popularity

BENIDORM, always a tourist industry leader, has gradually cornered a niche market and is fast becoming a favourite holiday destination for the gay community. Traditionally liberal Benidorm (it boasted a gay bar in the mid-70s when homosexuality was still a punishable offence) is also making a profit from the welcome it affords tourists of all nationalities, creeds and orientation.

According to the Spanish Tourist Institute, Turespaña, members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) collective, spend a daily average of 130 euros – 60 per cent more than heterosexual tourists and are mainly well-heeled urban professionals.  They are often noticeably younger and the majority of gay tourists heading for Benidorm tend to belong to the 18-35 age group.

Despite lacking official statistics, a spokesman for the regional government’s Tourism department said earlier this week that the Valencian Community had begun to concentrate on LGBT tourism as a “specific product” in 2008.   Preferred destinations were Benidorm, Valencia city and to a lesser extent Alicante city, making the Valencian Community the fourth most-popular with this specific market.

Benidorm features on various LGBT websites and two years ago the council produced a guide naming 32 gay bars.  “In Benidorm we don’t differentiate or assess the sexual tendencies of our visitors, or their number,” said Tourism councillor Manuel Cabezuelos.  On the recent International Gay Pride Day, however, the rainbow flag flew from the town hall balcony, as it did in Elche which is the only other town in the Valencia region that has been officially declared “Gay-Friendly”.

Antoni Mayor, president of Benidorm’s Hosbec hoteliers association said that most gay bars had clustered “almost spontaneously” in the Old Town and supported Turespaña’s view that the spending power of LGBT visitors was “significantly higher” than the majority of other local tourists.

Nevertheless, not all LGBT initiatives have been unqualified successes and last summer the Valencian Community’s first gay festival entitled “We are queers” had to cancel events. Benidorm council, then run by the conservative Partido Popular, barred the organisers from using the central Mal Pas beach between the Levante and Poniente beaches although plans are now forging ahead for a 2011 edition.  The crisis-hit Benidorm budget also prevented the town hall’s presence at “Pink Corner”, the section targeting homosexual tourists at the International Tourism trade fair held in Barcelona last April.  Spending restrictions have also forced the council to back out of organising Mediterranean Pride this coming September.

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