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Famous for beautiful beaches and natural landscapes, unabashed liberality during carnival and having just nabbed the 2016 Olympic Games, Rio de Janeiro also attracts gay tourists who revel in the city’s “gay-friendly” atmosphere despite its high crime rates.

Along with Barcelona, Buenos Aires, London, Montreal and Sydney, Rio is in the running as a finalist in the “best global destination” category of the TripOut Gay Travel Awards organized by MTV’s Logo channel.

TripOut Gay Travel is a Logo web property. The winner will be announced in November at the World Tourism Congress.

For Rio businessmen, garnering the TripOut Gay Travel Award would do wonders to erase the damning effects of frequent news footage showing police and drug traffickers in brutal shootouts in the city’s favelas , or slums.

Last year 1.7 million tourists visited Rio, which was less than the 1.8 million foreign visitors in 2004.

To offset the negative trend, Rio launched an effort to welcome major sporting events, such as the Pan-American Games in 2007. It will be a World Cup site in 2014 and was successful in its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

But both local officials and entrepreneurs are aware that, although immensely significant, those kinds of events are not enough and what the city needs is a “captive audience.” Growing international gay tourism appears like a good option.

“Diversity makes a lot of money for the city; it creates jobs, it increases tax revenue and contributes to sharing out wealth. The importance and growth of gay tourism in the world is indisputable. Rio has all the characteristics to be recognized as a gay-friendly city,” said Paulo Senise, Rio Convention and Visitors Bureau executive director.

The city’s tourism promotion firm, Riotur, also joined the campaign announcing that Rio residents “live together in harmony, regardless of race, religion, or sexual preference.”

“The city’s best hotels and restaurants are gay friendly, and so are top-notch bars, discotheques and meeting places for the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender] population,” Riotur said.

For Finnish national Seppo Suomela, now a Rio resident, the city was a case of “love at first sight.” Suomela, whose area of expertise is tourism, first found out about Rio in 2003, when he came to take photographs of the samba dance schools carnival parade.

“What I like about Rio is that I don’t need to go to a ‘gay’ bar or restaurant. They are all like that, in the sense that there is no discrimination,” he said. “Rio is a very open place where everybody is accepted as they are. Nobody cares about your sexual orientation,” Soumela said.

“No one stares if you’re walking along a street holding hands with another man. Sydney, for example, has a gay street, but what I like is to mix in with the local population and be accepted.”

Soumela said all the finalists in the TripOut Gay Travel 2009 “best global destination” competition are gay friendly, but Rio has something more to offer.

In his view, Rio is perhaps the “most beautiful city in the world,” is reasonably clean, has beautiful natural surroundings, the carnival, very good music, and beaches to offer. “But it isn’t only that, there are also incredible museums, incredible theaters and a relaxed mentality.”

“Gay people like parties, and there are lots of parties in Rio,” said hairdresser Jayme Rezende. He mentioned events like the Banda de Ipanema parade, which brings together thousands of transvestites at carnival time.

Rezende also referred to New Year’s celebrations, in which some two million people, all dressed in white, gather on Copacabana beach on Dec. 31.

Rezende said that another point in Rio’s favor is its “informal atmosphere.” An entire stretch along Ipanema beach has become “gay territory,” as indicated by a rainbow flag hoisted on a pole stuck in the sand in front of Farme de Amoedo street.

Tourism operator Angela Barros agreed, saying that in addition to popular festivities like carnival and New Year, Rio benefits from a “romantic image” making it attractive to a homosexual public.

“Gay people have a romantic view of Rio. They think the people are attractive, that there’s a lot of freedom, that there are no prejudices, and that’s why it is an important destination in that group,” she said.

According to Suomela, the “media visibility” winning the TripOut Gay Travel competition would give Rio would be a boon. But, he said, win or lose, Rio is already among the world’s most popular destinations for gay people.

“The best publicity comes from gay people who already came to the city and had a positive experience. Rio has that already,” he said.



Deutsche-Presse Agentur