Transcript: Diversity is a Fact, Inclusion is a Choice

Good morning, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome.

Hi, hello, and a very warm welcome to all of you, our IAPCO members. It’s great to have you with us today for this first webinar in our DEI series.

My name is Haka Deong and I’m part of the Education and Impact Team within IAPCO. Together with my colleague, Cindy Sos, who is also online, we’re thrilled to be joining this session with you.

Some of you might know that, for IAPCO, DEI is one of our core pillars. Over the last year we’ve heard clearly that it’s important to keep working on DEI, to keep talking about inclusion, and to keep asking: what does inclusion actually mean? How can we be more inclusive in our events and congresses, but also within our own teams and organizations?

We’re therefore very happy to have Jovana from ELA with us today to tell us more, and specifically to focus on the LGBTQ+ community: how we can make sure that our congresses and events are more inclusive and welcoming to this community.

Practically, the idea is to have about 45 minutes of presentation by Jovana and Luciano, followed by another 10–15 minutes for Q&A at the end. If you have any questions during the presentation, please put them in the chat and Cindy and I will keep an eye on them; we’ll address them towards the end. If, after the webinar, you feel there are still questions or topics you’d like to discuss, feel free to reach out to us anytime.

You will also receive a short survey at the end of the webinar. This will help us understand how you experienced the session and, more importantly, which other topics you would like IAPCO to address in the next 12 months through similar webinars.

With no further ado, thank you again very much for joining us, and I’d now like to give the floor to Jovana.

Thank you, everybody, and welcome to this webinar. Thank you for taking the time to be with us.

I am the General Secretary at ELA, the European LGBTQ+ Travel Alliance, based in Brussels. We work mainly with European countries to improve discussion and advocacy for the LGBTQ+ travelling community.

First of all, hello to everyone here. Let us start by understanding why we still need to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion in 2025.

We can think about human diversity along many different spectrums: gender, origin, age, culture, religion, nationality, physical abilities, identity, and sexual orientation. Today, when we talk about the LGBTQ+ community, our main focus will be on gender, identity, and sexual orientation.

Before going further, we should clarify what the acronym LGBTQ+ stands for: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and “plus” to include all other identities. There is a huge number of identities and diversities when it comes to gender. In fact, we can count roughly 70 different gender identities and ways in which people perceive themselves.

When we talk about gender, we need to understand that every personal expression of personality and sexuality can have a huge impact on everyday life. The expression of our gender is based on three main pillars:

  1. Identity – how we feel about ourselves, what we think we are, the way we talk to ourselves.
  2. Attraction – how we connect with the external world in terms of romantic and emotional attraction.
  3. Biological sex – the sex we were assigned at birth.

These three pillars together shape our gender expression. As mentioned, we are dealing with a very large number of gender expressions – around 70. Sometimes these are perceived as “awkward” or “queer”. In LGBTQ+, the “Q” stands for “queer”, which broadly refers to whatever is seen as different from what is considered “normal”.

Personally, I don’t like the word “different” very much, but I will use it here to help explain why we so often fall into stereotypes and prejudice. The word “different” tends to nurture stereotypes because our brain needs to organize knowledge and the world around us into categories. It is as if we have drawers in our brain, where we try to keep everything in order. Whatever does not fit into those existing drawers feels “different”, sometimes outrageous, risky, dangerous, or uncommon – something to fear.

One of our main challenges is therefore to overcome stereotypes and prejudice. Every kind of sexuality is, in reality, normal. Even Freud underlined that “normality” does not have a precise meaning in everyday life. Yet, because we give “normal” a fixed meaning, whatever falls outside of it is easily perceived as strange.

So the first thing we need is to reorganize the way we look at everyday life and at our own experience. We must rethink how we manage our emotions and reactions to other people’s feelings, identities, and expressions, and how we relate to others in our communities.

Why is this topic so important right now, and why is it so relevant in hospitality and business travel, incentives, congresses, and events?

The global state of LGBTQ+ human rights is, unfortunately, not very positive at the moment. There are indeed some encouraging developments: about 16 UN member states have strengthened laws that protect LGBTQ+ civil rights. However, many countries have made no significant progress, and some have actually regressed. The United States, for example, has seen worrying developments in several states in recent years.

On one hand, we have the importance of civil rights for the LGBTQ+ community. On the other hand, we have the economic importance of the LGBTQ+ travel segment. In 2024, LGBTQ+ travellers generated an estimated 3.9 trillion dollars in travel spending worldwide, with the United States alone accounting for almost 100 billion dollars. This is a continuously growing figure. By 2030, the global LGBTQ+ travel community is projected to generate almost 600 billion dollars annually in travel revenue.

This is a very significant economic impact. At the same time, some countries such as Denmark, Germany, and Finland have felt the need to provide more information about personal safety for LGBTQ+ travellers going abroad. The power of inclusion is huge. Being inclusive in all our activities – business travel, incentives, events, and organizational life – is fundamental. It is not only a matter of respecting civil rights; it is increasingly a matter of managing safety risks.

So what should we focus on?

First, we need to recognize that there are political and social movements actively pushing back against DEI. We must therefore work with suppliers and companies that share our belief in the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Second, we should implement concrete marketing and operational strategies that genuinely embrace the LGBTQ+ community.

When we talk about the LGBTQ+ community, we often use it as an umbrella term. The good news is that if we adopt good practices to welcome LGBTQ+ travellers, we are also creating a more welcoming environment for everyone.

Let us look briefly at tourism in Europe. Please consider the number of people we are talking about: roughly 10% of the world’s population identifies as LGBTQ+. If we are close to 10 billion people globally, we can estimate around 1 billion people in this community. In Europe alone, there were 67 million international LGBTQ+ arrivals in 2023. This has helped drive higher-quality hospitality in many European countries, especially through targeted marketing initiatives.

The LGBTQ+ community can be a very loyal target audience for brands and destinations that demonstrate genuine advocacy for their civil rights. Some key numbers for Europe: 55 billion euros in travel revenue generated in 2023, about 2 million LGBTQ+ employees working in hospitality, and 68% of LGBTQ+ travellers choosing LGBTQ+-friendly hotels or destinations.

This raises a key question: how can we work with the LGBTQ+ community? What can we do to attract them to our events, incentives, and conferences? How do we choose destinations and timing that include them meaningfully?

Let me share a few more insights. Diversity, equity, and inclusion in hospitality is no longer only a matter of values; it is also a response to growing risks and new expectations.

Generation Z is a good example. About 70% of Gen Z travellers say their travel decisions are strongly influenced by a destination’s capacity to advocate for civil rights. For LGBTQ+ travellers specifically, safety is the main concern: safety in the destination, safety in the hotel, and safety in the event venue. This often matters more than luxury or special services.

Within the workplace, especially in hospitality, it has been shown that diverse teams also perform better economically. McKinsey’s 2023 report “Diversity Wins”, for example, shows that companies with at least 33% diversity in leadership are significantly more likely to achieve above-average financial performance.

Now, what do we need to understand about a queer traveller in the context of events?

When we organize an event with panelists or delegates belonging to the LGBTQ+ community, we must remember that “the community” is not homogeneous. There are queer families, solo travellers, business travellers, and leisure travellers; their expectations differ.

We know that LGBTQ+ travellers tend to travel more and spend about 30% more than mainstream travellers. At the same time, they are fully aware of the challenges they may face: being outed at passport control, being refused entry, or facing discrimination at the destination. Around 70 countries in the world still criminalize homosexuality. In some of these, penalties can include long prison sentences or even the death penalty.

Because of these risks, LGBTQ+ travellers prioritize safety over luxury. Safety at the destination, safety in the hotel, and safety at the event location are their main focus.

If we want to attract LGBTQ+ delegates or organize events with strong LGBTQ+ advocacy, we must adopt best practices and avoid “pinkwashing” – the LGBTQ+ equivalent of “greenwashing”. Pinkwashing is when an organization markets itself as LGBTQ+-friendly without any real internal policies, training, or actions to support that claim.

Here are ten typical signs of pinkwashing – things we should avoid:

  1. Saying “everyone is welcome” while staff are not trained to understand or support LGBTQ+ guests.
  2. Using rainbow flags in marketing without having any internal DEI policies.
  3. Participating in Pride events while booking anti-LGBTQ+ speakers or vendors.
  4. Promoting inclusivity but keeping only binary gender options (male/female) in booking and registration forms.
  5. Displaying LGBTQ+ support without ever hiring queer consultants or engaging meaningfully with the community.
  6. Focusing only on gay men while ignoring trans people, lesbians, or Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) LGBTQ+ travellers.
  7. Having no crisis protocol in place for harassment or discrimination against guests.
  8. Never collecting LGBTQ+ customer feedback.
  9. Having no LGBTQ+ representation in leadership or vendor networks.
  10. Treating DEI as something that happens only during Pride month in June and then disappears for the rest of the year.

If we want to work seriously with the LGBTQ+ community, we must understand different “personas” within it:

In Europe, there are several top LGBTQ+ travel destinations for different profiles: solo trans travellers, BIPOC travellers, queer families, and business travellers. As a European association, we mainly focus on Europe, but of course there are many destinations beyond Europe as well.

What can we do in terms of marketing and communication?

Three important points:

  1. Be authentic. Involve the local LGBTQ+ community in activities linked to your event – for example, through local guides, artists, or community leaders. Let them share their stories and experiences.
  2. Use truly inclusive imagery. Show diverse body types, ages, races; reflect real couples and families, not just stereotypical images of young white gay men. Remember lesbians, trans people, and BIPOC people.
  3. Do not use Pride month as your only touchpoint. You can certainly support local Pride events in June, but you should also develop your own year-round policies and initiatives to support the LGBTQ+ community.

There are also several key dates beyond June that you can include in your calendar:

You can plan activities or communications around these days to show consistent support.

On your website and in your materials, you can also use specific LGBTQ+ focused graphics. There are image collections and platforms dedicated to representing gender diversity and queer communities which can help you visually reflect your commitment.

Choosing LGBTQ+-friendly destinations is becoming easier. The LGBTQ+ Travel Index created by DataPill, for instance, provides a useful overview of how safe and welcoming different countries and cities are for LGBTQ+ travellers. It is based on a large volume of reviews from LGBTQ+ travellers and includes broader hospitality indicators as well.

In Europe, the situation is quite mixed. Some “green” countries (like Spain and France, and increasingly Portugal and the UK) are strongly advocating for civil rights. As we move towards more “red” countries, civil rights are less respected or, in some cases, ignored. Eastern Europe, including Italy, still has considerable work to do to improve advocacy and protection for the LGBTQ+ community.

What can destinations do – and what can you do with them – to support LGBTQ+ travellers?

Step by step, what can we do in the MICE sector to become more inclusive?

Some essential points:

A few words on Queer Values: this is a certification protocol covering all travel activities, including MICE, conferences, and congresses. It is a concrete certification, not just a label. It includes an external audit at the end of a training process and requires a written handbook where you define your own policies and keep them updated.

Queer Values is currently a leading protocol and, so far, the first of its kind in the world. The certification is issued by RINA, an international certification body active in around 70 countries. You can find more information and useful tips on the Queer Values website.

To summarize this part: we have gone through the reasons why DEI – and specifically LGBTQ+ inclusion – is crucial in our sector, what queer travellers need, which pitfalls to avoid (pinkwashing), and some concrete steps and tools that can help.

At this point, I would like to invite Luciano to join us.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Welcome to the webinar.

Thank you, Jovana, and thank you for having me. I will be very quick because I need to jump onto another call in a few minutes, but I really wanted to say a few words about our collaboration and our experience with you and with the LGBTQ+ target, particularly the IGLTA convention in Milan in 2022.

Hosting this convention was a great opportunity for us and a great experience for me and my team. It was wonderful to cooperate with Jovana, with Sonders & Beach, and with the Italian LGBTQ+ association. We started working together back in 2016 or 2017 when we first applied to host the convention, and we worked together for several years to make it happen.

In the end, we had the opportunity to host this major event, which gave us significant added value in terms of city branding, tourism, and communication. For Milan, it was also a “natural” path because the city has always been an inclusive city; inclusion is in our DNA.

From an institutional point of view, our city administration has long been very open to DEI policies, so it was relatively easy for us to join and work with Jovana and the team to bring the convention to Milan. We then worked at city level to spread the message and engage citizens, associations, and stakeholders in order to make the city and the convention as inclusive as possible.

From a more technical perspective, my job is to promote the city and to focus on specific target groups. The “typical” Milan tourist is relatively high-spending and culturally oriented. In this sense, the LGBTQ+ target is a perfect fit for Milan: LGBTQ+ visitors are often highly educated, high-spending tourists, and this aligns very well with our positioning.

Hosting IGLTA in 2022 was therefore a natural and strategic choice for us. We worked not only with international partners but also closely with the local community, which gave us very positive feedback. Milan already has a strong LGBTQ+ community, with a whole neighbourhood (Porta Venezia) known as a focal point for LGBTQ+ life, so we started from there and tried to spread the message outward.

So, once again, thank you, Jovana, for our collaboration. It was a great experience, and we are continuing to work together.

Thank you very much, Luciano, for this contribution. Before you go, let’s see if there are any questions for you.

Are there any questions in the group for Luciano?

Yes, I see Milena.

Hi, hello everybody. I was wondering: how was the decision to choose Milan as the destination made?

Thank you for the question. Jovana can answer better, but I’ll start. We applied to host the convention along with many other major cities.

Yes, exactly. We were competing with Paris, Bogotá, Madrid, Seville, and other important destinations. Milan won the bid because the impact we created with our proposal and our presentation to IGLTA was extremely strong and convincing. The programme we proposed and the commitment shown by the city made a big difference.

Thank you. Any other questions for Luciano?

I have one, related to the congress. You mentioned that the congress aligned well with Milan’s policy of openness. My question is: do you now see an impact on how you organize other congresses in the city that have nothing to do with LGBTQ+ directly? Has hosting this congress influenced the way you design events or select speakers more generally?

Yes, I think so. I don’t have the figures with me right now, but we have seen a positive impact. We also work on this aspect with YesMilano Convention Bureau, our official convention bureau, and our DMO partners. It is a process: you might start with leisure tourism, but step by step you extend that path to the MICE segment, which is very important for us. We have observed that the experience with IGLTA has influenced how we think about diversity and inclusion in other events as well.

If I may add something: the LGBTQ+ community is involved in many activities by Milan Municipality, not only for congresses and conferences, but also in events for citizens. The community is frequently involved in local events, and their representatives are considered when selecting delegates, panelists, and speakers. The municipality has its own DEI policy and an ethical charter; they are very serious about it. For example, they use anonymous CVs in recruitment and are very mindful of inclusion in their teams and suppliers.

This has been a long-term journey – at least ten years – and it is continuing. Milan is today the most important city in Italy for the LGBTQ+ community, and you can find LGBTQ+ people represented in many professions across the city.

Thank you, Jovana. We see one more question in the chat:

“What advice do you have for a conservative or Muslim destination in Asia, which is advanced in organizing business events, to start its LGBTQ+ journey – openly or otherwise?”

This is a very important and complex question. When we talk about Muslim cultures, we know that it is often not easy to address gender diversity or homosexuality openly. My first point would be to focus only on those countries or cities where you can realistically offer a degree of safety to LGBTQ+ travellers. If a country still applies the death penalty for homosexuality, for instance, it becomes extremely risky, and we cannot reasonably recommend hosting clearly LGBTQ+-branded events there.

For destinations that are not so extreme, I suggest three main steps:

  1. Provide complete, honest information about the local culture and legal situation to any LGBTQ+ speakers or delegates you invite.
  2. Be able to guarantee safety within your venues – hotels, convention centres, and event sites – as far as possible, with clear protocols and support.
  3. Offer practical advice on personal behaviour and risk management. This may sound uncomfortable, but being well-informed about how to behave in certain contexts can literally save lives.

There is ongoing work in this area. For example, Sonders & Beach is developing a specific LGBTQ+ business travel protocol for such contexts. We could go much deeper into this, but these three pillars – information, venue safety, and behavioural guidance – are a good starting point for MICE events in conservative destinations.

Luciano, we know you have to leave. Thank you very much again for being with us.

Thank you, and goodbye everyone.

Perhaps I can link back to the earlier question with a European example. Some years ago, I worked with Belgian organizations on LGBTQ+ issues, and they decided, together with a European association, to hold their congress in a European country where LGBTQ+ legislation was weak and social acceptance was low. Precisely for that reason, they wanted to go there.

Their goal was to use the congress as a platform to engage with local politicians and governments, and to slowly change attitudes and laws. It’s a long-term project; you don’t transform a country overnight. But meetings and events can act as catalysts for change.

Coming back to the question about “the journey”: a journey implies multiple steps over time. Hosting an LGBTQ+ congress in a destination that is not yet very open – but not extremely dangerous – can be one of those steps. It sends a strong signal and can help build dialogue.

Absolutely. ILGA-Europe, for example, deliberately organizes events in “difficult” destinations. They want to bring the conversation there, talk with politicians, media, and influencers, and demonstrate that inclusion is an added value. They choose challenging destinations precisely to start this conversation.

I fully agree that the MICE sector can be a concrete trailblazer for change. While structural change may take years or decades, events can plant the first seeds and support bottom-up change, especially among younger generations.

We are nearing the end of our time. Are there any final comments or questions about the presentation or the topic in general?

If not, I will stop sharing so you can see us all better.

You will receive the slides after the webinar, including our contact details. Please feel free to contact us if you have further questions.

Also, for those of you who know, IAPCO’s Annual Congress will take place in Porto in November. There will be a very interesting session by Kirby Court, CEO of a major convention centre in Canada. He will talk about how his venue hosted an event by an extreme-right speaker whose message did not align with the venue’s values, and how he managed this situation knowing that half of his staff identify as LGBTQ+. He will share how he dealt with staff safety, values, and client relationships. It’s a powerful case study on inclusion, events, and leadership.

Finally, ELA has just become part of a major European project focused on LGBTQ+ inclusion among hospitality staff. This will be a large, three-year programme, and we hope to come back to you in future to share the results and insights.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today, wherever you are in the world. It was great to have you online. We hope to see some of you in Porto or at IBTM in Barcelona.

As mentioned, don’t hesitate to reach out to Cindy or myself; we will be happy to follow up. And, Jovana, thank you very much for your excellent presentation. We learned a lot.

Thank you all, and goodbye.