The Gay Baby Boomers – Are We The Forgotten Generation?

I make no apologies for this post as it goes worldwidebut sometimes things just have to be said. I was reading through postings in a group on GTN and it got me thinking about times past...Never a good thing to do when you get older, but at the time I was having a trawl through gay web sites generally and noticed that wherever you go, most of the bars, clubs, and other venues for gay men, seem to revolve around younger people.

I should point out at this stage that I am actually a bit too young to be a ‘baby boomer’, well almost anyway.

Now this could just be me of course, but although us older lot still like to go out and have a good time, do we, when we are on holiday, want to spend our nights clubbing and our days sitting on the beach or by a pool with a hangover, getting fried to a crisp, and then repeating the whole process over again the next night?

Yes, we do like the occasional visit to a nightclub to watch the crass, callow eye candy dance the night away aided by two bottles of beer and a pocketful of illegal substances, but in spite of what they think, we are not dead from neck up, or from the waist down, (as more than one young gentleman discovered when I was visiting Peru and Chile last month).

And while they drink their two beers, us mature ones sit there and consume an entire bottle of gin with not too much tonic as we don’t have malaria as the barman seems to think.

OK, we are on holiday so we can sleep the following day but for most of us sleeping in the sun for hours on end is out of the question. We are more likely to want to spend the day submerged in a tank of moisturiser to try and reverse the ravages that time, (and too much alcohol), has wrought upon us.

And yet many gay ‘destinations’ offer little else to do.

Let’s take the Greek island of Mykonos, probably one of the most famous gay destinations in the world. And don’t get me wrong here, Mykonos is a pretty island, but it is not the almost exclusively gay Greek island that it was back in the 1970’s when I first went there. There is gay nightlife and some gay beaches, and in August it is inundated with Greeks and Italians of both sexes out for a good time. But the admirable burghers of Mykonos, and indeed the businesses themselves, more than certainly discovered that you cannot run an entire Greek island just on gay clientele.

So what do you do on an island the size of Mykonos, once you have visited the museums, a couple of churches, and been to the island of Delos?

Apart from spending evenings drinking, and days sunbathing, the answer is not a lot, and for many of us older gay men this is sometimes not quite enough. We are not so far past it that we just want to sit about and play bingo. We still want to go and see things.

New things.

Different things.

So what do we do?

We invent our own destination. A new destination more suited to our needs. And some of us have already done this in a small way. And because we are not dead from the neck up many of us know how to use the internet so we can travel independently not just follow the crowd and go where a travel agent sends us on a package tour.

The Greek island of Crete, for instance, welcomes many gay visitors each year, although we do not shout about it too much because that is the Cretan (or Greek), way. But for the older gay man, and woman, Crete offers much more than just beaches and clubs.

For a start Crete is a large island with some spectacular mountain scenery dotted with small hill villages just asking to be explored, and although I don’t suggest you take up mountain climbing, there is some great walking, (mainly downhill), that can be done such as the Samaria Gorge, the longest in Europe (yes, Crete is part of Europe), and a wealth of historical sites such as Knossos.

And if it is mythology you are after than what better than Psychro’s Cave where Zeus was born, (and no, I never met him personally, although on a bad day you can be forgiven for asking), followed by a drive around the Lassithi Plateau with chance to see the lammergeyer s that live there (and they are not so difficult to find as some people make out!), so there is something for the keen birder to look out for as well! Around the Plateau are a number of small villages and a couple of larger towns including Tzermiado, where, according to visitors from France, ‘you can get the best goat in Europe’.

Sadly most of the windmills that you see in photographs of Lassithi, are now gone, the water being pumped by electricity generated by wind turbines (!), but around the island you can see the remains of the many stone built windmills from a bygone age, along with some fine examples of Byzantine and Venetian architecture.

But after all this history and physical activity, you need to relax sometimes and Crete has a wide range of beaches including nudist beaches.

And bars.

In fact Crete has two ‘dedicated’ gay bars, Eros Bar in Malia, which has been running for some years, and the newer Roze Maandag (Pink Monday) Bar in Port Hersonissos which opened in summer 2011.

Different in style, they both play similar music but at different volumes! Eros is more of a night/dance club often frequented by Greeks and tends to start late and finish very early the following day so be prepared for a long night out. Roze Maandag bills itself as European, and has a much ‘loungier’ feel to it. You are likely to hear the same ‘gay anthems’ from the same ‘gay icons’ in both bars, but in Roze Maandag you can hear yourself think.

And for a place to stay (and here comes a bit of absolutely shameless self-promotion), there is Villa Ralfa, conveniently located just outside Port Hersonissos, and thirty minutes walk from the village of Pano Hersonissos. Villa Ralfa was Crete’s first LGBT guesthouse and gay homestay, which opened in 200,4 and since then has welcomed independent LGBT travellers from around the world. Of course you may find other hotels on Crete listed as being ‘gay friendly’ but in general these are large ‘all inclusive resorts’ which are really just ‘gay anonymous’ as you are just one or two guests in amongst several hundred. These sort of hotels are naturally the ones favoured by the so called gay travel agencies who really are not interested in true gay owned and run hotels for the simple reason that they cannot make any money by sending you to these, instead they seem to think that everyone will be happy to pay several hundred euros a night for a room without breakfast just because they have booked through a ‘gay travel agency’.

Which lead us on to a final point. The price.

Looking again at various articles it seems that some of the ageing LGBT population are having problems with ‘affordable housing’. Which seems to blow the argument that gay and lesbian people have more money, right out of the water. Sure we may own our own homes but we have been working for 35 years to pay for them. And as we grow older our incomes become fixed either because we are on a pension, or the companies we used to work for have ‘disposed’ of us, or as naturally happens our opportunities for advancement and salary rises no longer exist.

So what is the cost of a holiday on Crete?

The answer is surprisingly little.

Crete (and indeed Greece), has some of the cheapest accommodation in the world and you can get very good accommodation in a family run apartment block from as little as 20 euros per night even in high season. But bear in mind you will often have to book direct with the apartments as the travel agents will mark that up to 40 or so euros per night. Villa Ralfa charges a little more but you do get the pleasure of knowing that almost certainly your fellow guests will be LGBT, (you don’t get money back if they aren’t because they are probably friends of mine and I have them well trained), and we do look after you well, and we know our way around the gay scene, and which are the best places to go for that essential mojito before dinner.

And for food and drink, pricewise probably the best comparison that there is, is South America. A good main course and a glass of wine or bottle of beer will cost you about the same as in Lima or Cusco, or indeed in Santiago de Chile. If you want to ‘splurge’ then there are expensive places, the same as there are everywhere.

So if thinking about a Mediterranean holiday and travelling independently, and want a place to go where there are things to do then Crete, Greece is a very good option for the mature LGBT traveller.

Take The Gay and Lesbian Community Survey 2010

So we are being urged to do, in fact there is a link to it on my Villa Ralfa web site here to save you looking any further.

'There are lies, damn lies, and statistics' was once quoted by Mark Twain, originally attributed to Disraeli, but appearing nowhere in any of his writings, the phrase is nonetheless, still true today.

The Gay and Lesbian Community Survey is, of course, a worthy cause in itself, but it will only mean anything if enough LGBT people complete it.

Even then the only accurate piece of information that you can glean from it is how many people actually took the survey!

So why should I be asking you to do it? Mainly because it has now gone international and with the help of the GLBT community in countries other than America we can set some of the statistics right!

From here on, are my personal opinions based on my personal experience over 40 years of being part of the LGBT community, living on two continents and travelling in many countries and meeting hundreds and very possibly thousands of LGBT people. I have also been involved in four businesses owned and run by LGBT people.

Of course you can comment as you wish, but make the comments constructive please.

So let's look at the purpose of the survey first.

The survey results will almost certainly be used to sell things to the LGBT market, some marketeers will use to their own advantage by saying to companies 'You have no LGBT marketing strategy, you are missing out on a lot of money. For the measly sum of several thousand dollars we will advise you on how you can sell to the LGBT community, and train your staff to deal with LGBT clients.' (Makes me feel like I am a person with 'special needs')

Of course we are looking at the value of the 'Pink Pound' or Dollar or whatever here, and bearing in mind that the survey was designed for the US, the bottom income bracket is far too high for many other countries, including Greece, where I live. Immediately then us in Greece will be discounted for the results as not worth marketing to as we don't have any money.

Hardly fair is it?

A good income in Greece is around US$15,000 pa, with many earning much less, especially those in the tourist industry who work for only six months of the year! But does this make us poverty stricken? Well no it doesn't. But what it does do is put into question this whole thing about the value of the 'Pink Economy'.

In my experience, gathered over 40 years, LGBT people are no more likely to be wealthier or poorer than straight people, particularly, as by choice, many GLBT people are likely to be in lower paid work such as social services (which we are extremely good at, I might add).

Taking another example from the survey, 'How much bottled/mineral water do you drink a week?' This is obviously aimed at the countires where drinking bottled water is a status symbol. In my answers it wouldn't let me put in the actual amount as the maximum is 36, and for many people in Greece this answer would be similar. Now before anyone gets their cheque book out to pay for a multi-million euro advertising campaign in Greece selling expensive designer bottled water, let me point out that in general we don't drink the tap water in Greece, and those five 'waters' that I drank outside my home were taken with the five coffees I had outside my home each week, and I didn't pay for them either because in Greece the water comes with the coffee automaitically! (Damn, perhaps I shouldn't have said that...I always like it when companies make disastrous marketing errors. Who remembers that slogan 'You're never alone with a Strand'?).

Another one from the survey. The section about your feelings towards companies and their 'outreach' to the GLBT community. How about a box to tick which says 'It makes no difference'?
And let's face it, if you have, say, an airline with nice flight times, good service, and an excellent safety record, but no 'outreach', and another with crappy planes, bad flight times, and a bad safety record, but excellent 'outreach', which one are you really going to choose?

As a bit of brand loyalty here, if I am flying internally in Greece, I go with Aegean because they have these really nice moist pecan nut cookies, the coffee they give you to go with them is dire, but the cookies are NICE.

I mentioned previously that I had been involved with gay owned and run businesses in the past, from my experience in those businesses, being LGBT owned/friendly/run does not necessarily mean you will attract LGBT clients! Clients go where they want to go and about the only place where it makes a distinct difference is with bars and clubs. You will see around the Internet, (you do use the Internet don't you? A lot of LGBT people do not, which makes an Internet based survey open to doubt), stories of companies seeing huge increases in business after LGBT marketing campaigns, these should be taken with a pinch of salt, after all how can they tell if you are LGBT or not? Is it tatooed on your head? Is there a tick box on the online booking form on the web site? It is more likely that the advertising campaign as a whole led to increased sales irresepective of the target group.

I think personally that they should ask us more about travel and holidays too.

Having said all this, DO take the survey, DO answer the questions honestly, and DO remember to put in the right country. A sudden upsurge in answers outside of the norms that the marketeers are expecting will make then think again about their approach.

DO also complete the last page with the extra questions and DO sign up for the possibility of being in working groups. I was fortunate enough to be involved in one of these last year, employed by an electronic manufacturer who was suffering a severe fall in sales, when he finally got the results he thanked us all by email and said 'I do not know how we got it so wrong'.

You can find a link to the survey through my web site at http://www.villaralfa.com, and you will find Community Marketing Inc here