A study of the world’s most popular countries for LGBTQ+ travel reveals the good, the average & the ugly.
Instead of relying on hearsay and anecdotes from other travelers, authors took a deep look at LGBTQ+ rights, country by country. After 250+ hours of research, they’ve reviewed all countries’ individual laws and gathered data from a variety of trusted international sources to create the definitive “LGBTQ+ Travel Safety Index” that will help you find the safest (and least safe) countries for your next trip abroad.
To measure LGBTQ+ safety abroad, one cannot look only at data on whether or not same-sex marriage is legal and if anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination laws are in place. It also depends on the general attitude of the culture, minutiae of the legal system, and oppression of LGBTQ+ rights. These issues can affect everything, from your ability to show public displays of affection to being able to share a hotel room bed to the capacity at which you can use dating apps without being caught by the local police. A few items on our list, such as adoption recognition and worker protections may not affect LGBTQ+ travelers directly, but these factors are a good indication of overall attitudes within the culture.
Study Limitations: Due to budget constraints, the methodology used in our index does not sample the actual experiences of LGBTQ tourists who have visited each country. One way we attempted to overcome this weakness was by utilizing the Gallup World Poll as well as looking at each countries laws and any progress the country’s had in comparison with our 2019 research.
More on methodology: https://www.asherfergusson.com/lgbtq-travel-safety/