Some Reflection on Gay Travel in 2009 and Some Good Reasons to Book Early for 2010

As the autumn crocuses come into bloom in the garden here at Villa Ralfa, they act as a reminder that it is time to start a review of the past year, and what needs to be done in time for next year’s tourist season.

This year has seen some difficulties in the tourist industry, not just here on Crete, Greece, but in other parts of the Europe also. The tour companies and airlines, expecting lower demand, reacted by reducing the availability of holidays and flights, with the result that prices were not actually as low as some expected. Certainly there were reasonable price packages available in very limited supplies, but many of those taking them found that they were housed in ‘all-inclusive’ resorts which cater for thousands of guests rather than a score or so of apartments.
This is fine if you do not mind going to breakfast, lunch, and dinner when the gong goes, and if you do not really want to sample some real Greek food, or experience real Greek hospitality in family run apartments, but we are gay or lesbian and fiercely independent and because we don’t have children (well most of us don’t!), we are not tied to school holidays. And we don’t need to follow the flock!

Surprisingly for a sector of the population that likes to think itself ‘avant-garde’ and adventurous, many gay and lesbian people still follow the crowd and book package holidays and continue to perpetuate the myth that some destinations are ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’. Two examples in Greece are Mykonos and Lesbos, both of which appear in ordinary package holidays brochures and at peak times are overrun with families and children. Another is Sitges in Spain which back in the late 70’s was the place for gay people to go in Spain.

Back then we were trailblazers in so many ways, but sadly the days when these destinations were exciting and distinctly gay has gone, and they have become just another destination, and in many resorts the sight of same sex couples holding hands by the pool would be distinctly unwelcome ‘in front of the children’. Sorry guys, but in the end there were just not enough of us to run and entire Greek island!
Naturally these destinations do have all gay resorts and entertainment, but as is quite common these days they tend to be expensive, presumably because they are working on the value of the ‘Pink Dollar’. Visitors to Villa Ralfa are, of course, independent travellers ‘doing the islands’ and when I get reports that a bottle of beer in a club in Mykonos costs €8 and accommodation cost €150 per night, then I start to wonder for which sector of the gay and lesbian population they cater. I personally think that estimates of the amount of ‘pink’ money are wildly over-estimated (as I have said elsewhere!). And that many think that if they open a gay resort or accommodation they will have a captive audience.

A good example of this is here on Crete, where I opened Villa Ralfa as gay lodgings in Summer 2004. At that time if you ‘Googled’ ‘gay’ and ‘Crete’ together nothing that made any sense came up in the results. Of course the Villa Ralfa web site changed that because Google loves things that are new, and it was a matter of about 3 weeks before searching for the same terms produced Villa Ralfa in the first ten places! Almost immediately someone else decided to do the same as me, and three years later a German couple took an entire apartment block and tried letting it out as a gay resort. Since then I have had English people staying with me who were planning to actually build a small gay resort way out in the back of beyond.

The German couple stayed open for one season, and the planned resort as far as I know never got off the ground, if it did then their web site designer needs a kick in the arse as none other than me ever appears in search results!

So why did they fail? Because they didn’t do their homework and were trying to cater to the wrong people, that’s why. Gay and lesbian visitors who come to Crete don’t come expecting gay nightlife although there is quite a definite scene here, they come for the history, the archaeology, the scenery on this beautiful island, the food, and perhaps a few days on the famous Hersonissos nudist beach!

Here at Villa Ralfa we understand this as all of our guests are independent travellers, people who have got up off their butts and done a few minutes work on the Internet and discovered just how easy it is to do it yourself! Which is why we are here to help! Our web site, which is about as consistent and eccentric as ‘Craigslist’, contains a wealth of information to help the independent traveller and because we know the island we can tell you how long it will take you to get to somewhere and what time the buses run, and how to get from the airport for €3 rather than €35 in a cab.

But in spite of all this, we still get prospective guests who ask for the information and availability but get no further because they don’t book flights soon enough! I forget how many times I have said this now, but I am saying it again, book your flight as early as possible, in fact for next summer now is a good time because once it is booked the price is fixed. Gone is the time when you could get a standby flight cheap at the airport, gone are the days when prices went down as the flight date approached. The carriers realised a long time ago with the advent of Internet booking that passengers tended to search for flights but not book them until later, so of course they increase the prices as time goes on!

And naturally there are still many living in the past and conveniently forget that oil and aviation fuel prices have risen dramatically over the last few years.
Even as I write this in October, the majority of the budget and charter airlines across Europe already have the flights for next summer up for sale on their web sites, and it will come as no surprise to anyone I am sure to find that the number of seats on an aircraft is actually limited! Our links page is possibly one of the most underused on our web site, possibly because many links pages are totally irrelevant, but ours actually contains a wealth of USEFUL links, including one to Attitude Travel which collates all the budget airlines in one place.

An additional facet is that Villa Ralfa only takes a maximum of 6 guests, a fact which is quite clear from the web site, and prospective guests often try and book a room in July for an August arrival date when all the August dates have been booked since January! You would be surprised how often guests ask me about availability in January but do nothing more and are disappointed to find that it is taken when they try and book 4 or 5 months later.

All this amounts to one thing, book early! Doing so guarantees your flights are available and at a reasonable price, and once you have booked and paid all your costs are fixed and final,and you get to go where you want to go not the leftovers that the travel agents have on offer.

Hey Presto, holidays done in a flash all through the power of the Internet!