To celebrate Pride Month, the leader in luxury, ‘exceptional travel’ Scott Dunn has developed its tailor-made travel service, to cater to the needs of LGBTQ+ travellers. Scott Dunn LGBTQ+ holidays is part of the company’s dedication to fostering greater diversity and inclusion in what they do as a business. Call it a coming-out if you like, we’re certainly celebrating this new milestone for the brand … and we’re very proud to say that OutThere has played an integral part in making it happen.
It’s Pride Month and the social sphere is awash with empowering rainbow memes, capturing the essence of the LGBTQ+ experience and praising the community’s fortitude. At least they are on our timelines.
One particularly caught our attention in the last week, reposted by queer music artist Janelle Monae. It reads, “Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimise humiliation and prejudice. The massive task of our adult lives is to unpick which parts of ourselves are truly us and which parts we’ve created to protect us.”
This goes some way to explain the process and importance of “coming out” to LGBTQ+ people; and being able to truly be our authentic selves. Coming out is not just something we do with the rest of the world, but more crucially, it is about how we personally rationalise our own identity. Despite a great leap forward when it comes to equality, LGBTQ+ people still struggle to come out, because of the heteronormative social frameworks that still exist in much of society today. And when we say “come out”; we don’t actually just mean in the sense of that monumental first time that we do it to our friends, our parents and family, or our colleagues.
The fact of the matter is that LGBTQ+ people have to come out every day. Whenever we interact with anyone, we have to decide if we are going to truly be ourselves, or go into ‘safe mode.’ And it happens particularly when we travel.
When we spend money on a big holiday, heteronormativity really shouldn’t be something that we have to put up with. ‘Coming out’ on holiday really shouldn’t be something have to do. We should all be afforded the luxury of travelling knowing that that’s all taken care of; and that we can feel safe and celebrated while on vacation.
That’s what we said to luxury travel company Scott Dunn when we first started working together. Priding themselves on being a truly 21st-century operator, our conversation prompted a review of how they work with guests from diverse backgrounds. It led to us collaborating on a number of landmark initiatives … from OutThere conducting unconscious bias and cultural sensitivity workshops for their teams across their offices in London, San Diego and Singapore; to diving deeper into perfecting the guest experience, marketing and communications; to promoting inclusive policies and procedures; to us helping to direct Scott Dunn LGBTQ+ holidays experts to the destinations that are a good fit for the community. As we’re all about boundless travel, we also advised on a number of more conservative destinations that LGBTQ+ people would love to visit but will require a travel partner that is more attuned to greater needs for safety.
So Pride Month this year takes on a slightly different meaning for us; as we’re proud as punch to help launch Scott Dunn LGBTQ+ Holidays, in partnership with OutThere. Whatever your reason to travel, Scott Dunn’s travel experts know the destinations and experiences – ones that we helped choose – intimately and can offer impartial advice to ensure peace of mind and offer the safest and most welcoming of luxury holidays, with your personal needs in mind.
Photography by Jason Blackeye, Jeremy Bishop, Lewis J Goetz, Humphrey Muleba
