Gay Travel in Red States: The Case For and Against Spending Your Rainbow Dollars

The question surfaces every travel season and has only sharpened since 2024: should queer people spend their vacation dollars in states whose governments are actively hostile to them? Travel writer Jared Ranahan recently sparked a fresh round of debate on Threads, arguing that writing off entire states misses the real, thriving queer life that exists inside them.

The Case Ranahan Makes

Growing up in liberal Massachusetts, Ranahan says he understands the instinct to stay away. He's also visited Florida more than 30 times and made trips through deep-red states across the country. Those experiences, he argues, complicate the blue-state-good, red-state-bad framework. He specifically calls out Lafayette, Louisiana and Corpus Christi, Texas as cities with genuine, kitschy queer scenes despite being represented by Republicans in Congress.

"I've had, on many occasions, been to deep ruby red states and found really fun queer scenes." Jared Ranahan, travel writer

His broader point is about solidarity rather than politics: dismissing entire populations, including the queer people who actually live there, serves no one. Champion gymnast Luke Strong made a similar argument about international travel, noting that he has met gay people in every country he has visited, including places where homosexuality is criminalized.

Florida: Queer Oasis, Hostile State

Florida is the sharpest illustration of the tension. South Beach remains an iconic LGBTQ+ resort destination. Wilton Manors in Broward County is the second-gayest city in the United States by percentage of residents, its main strip lined with queer-owned bars and businesses. Florida also has one of the largest LGBTQ+ populations of any state in the country. And yet the state government has moved aggressively in the opposite direction. A new law restricts municipalities from promoting LGBTQ+ visibility. Miami Beach only restored its rainbow crosswalk this April after the original was removed. The NAACP issued a travel advisory for Florida citing Governor Ron DeSantis' record against marginalized communities. Most striking for travelers: Visit Florida, the state's official tourism website, quietly deleted its entire LGBTQ+ travel section, removing guides to queer neighborhoods, events, and businesses without any public announcement.

Travelers Are Already Voting With Their Feet

Whatever the ethical argument, the behavior shift is already measurable. According to data from the LGBTQ+ travel platform misterb&b, bookings in red states dropped 9% between February and April 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, while bookings in blue states rose 22% over the same stretch. Canadian users cut their U.S. bookings by 66%; European users by 32%. The platform's CEO noted that total global LGBTQ+ travel spending hasn't fallen; queer travelers are simply going elsewhere. The top five U.S. destinations for American LGBTQ+ travelers, according to available data, are New York City, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Los Angeles/West Hollywood. All are in blue states. The self-sorting, it seems, is well underway.

Why It Matters: $331 Billion in Play

The stakes behind the debate are not trivial. The global LGBTQ+ tourism market was estimated at $331 billion in 2024, with the U.S. market alone projected to approach $600 billion by 2030. Redirecting even a fraction of that spending is a genuine economic signal, not just symbolic protest. Red-state destinations with dependent local queer economies would feel it. That's the point, proponents of boycotts argue. The counterargument is that local queer people and queer-owned businesses absorb the hit too. WorldPride DC in 2025 drew an estimated 1.2 million attendees instead of the projected 3 million, generating roughly $310 million in economic impact instead of the projected $787 million. The shortfall hurt local workers and small businesses in one of the most LGBTQ+-friendly cities in the country. A boycott's collateral damage rarely falls neatly on the intended target.

"I personally don't love the idea of writing off that entire place and saying, 'You all suck. You all hate gay people and trans people.'" Jared Ranahan, travel writer

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Ranahan's instinct to resist binary thinking is reasonable, and the queer communities in red states are real and worth acknowledging. But "don't write off the whole state" is different from "spend freely." The data suggests most LGBTQ+ travelers are already making distinctions: not a hard boycott, but a quiet reweighting toward places where the official welcome mat is actually out. For many travelers, especially trans people, that's less a political statement than a practical safety calculation. The most honest answer to the red-state vacation question is probably the least satisfying one: it depends on who you are, where you're going, and what you can afford to risk. What's clearer is that the rainbow dollar is enormous, its movement is measurable, and politicians in tourist-dependent states should probably be paying closer attention.

Source: Queerty

Cover photo: Jahra Tasfia Reza / Pexels