LGBTQ+ Tourism: Proudly in Portugal

INDEX

Portugal: a path for diversity in tourism

Over the last two decades, Portugal set in motion a series of ventures to increase the awareness towards the visibility of LGBTQ+ people. This was accompanied by substantial changes in the country’s legal framework, affirming their fundamental rights: from laws protecting against discrimination based on sexual orientation to same-sex marriage or the rights to gender self-determination of transgender people. In 2019, this progress translated into Portugal gaining worldwide recognition as one of the safest countries for LGBTQ+ people. 

Notwithstanding these advances, other players in society have been relatively slow to converge. For example, little effort has been put into developing products or services specifically targeted at the LGBTQ+ community and the existing offer is primarily located in big cities. This is especially relevant in the Tourism sector, one of the main drivers of the Portuguese economy, where several different opportunities remain to explore.

In this context, Variações – Associação de Comércio e Turismo LGBTI de Portugal, with the support of Portugal’s Tourism Board (Turismo de Portugal), approached us to develop the first campaign to present Portugal to the world as one of the leading LGBTQ+ travel destinations. The “Proudly Portugal” brand was born and the “Portugal. Travel to Feel” campaign unleashed between November 2019 and June 2020. This has been an incredibly gratifying process as we’ve watched a community gather around “Proudly Portugal” to generate results that are beyond everyone’s expectations, even amidst the Covid-19 pandemic that disrupted the world early in 2020.

How we helped

• Branding: brand logotype, storytelling and tone of voice; extensive brand book with visual communication guidelines; photography; brochures and print advertising;
• Design and Digital Strategy: social listening to understand the feelings of LGBTQ+ travellers towards Portugal; UI/UX design; website design and development; social media management and community building; content strategy; incentivising user-generated content; PPC Ads; Instagram and Facebook Ads; digital performance reporting; building a network of partners to expand the project’s reach; 
• Creative Campaigns: concept and character development; scheduling and implementation of the “Portugal. Travel to Feel.” campaign through different media; concept development and implementation of a social media campaign to celebrate IDAHOT 2020
• Content Production: production of 5 campaign videos; storytelling and copywriting; animated infographics; articles related to the unique selling points of Portugal as a unique LGBTQ+ destination; interviews with key micro-influencers from the community; photography and motion design for digital channels

Is Portugal an LGBTQ+ friendly destination?

All across Europe, there are renowned LGBTQ+ travel destinations such as London, Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam or Mykonos, among others. Over the years, these places became widely perceived as gay-friendly, which naturally makes them top of mind for travel planning and spending, resulting in millions of incoming tourists every year. Some of these countries engage in campaigns directed at LGBTQ+ people, others in organising international events such as some of the most significant Pride events in the world. Additionally, they’ve been growing touristic products specially tailored to the community, reinforcing structures that allow for inclusive hospitality experiences. 

Tourism has always been one of the most developed sectors of the Portuguese economy, collecting awards and recognition throughout recent years as a leading destination. In 2019, more than 25 million tourists visited our country; of these, it is estimated that around 1.5 million (~6%) would be LGBTQ+ travellers. However, to the best of our knowledge, there haven’t been explicit efforts to address and expand this niche market. Portugal still lacks a critical amount of touristic products tailored to this segment, while the existing ones are clustered in major cities such as Lisbon and Porto.

If we could sum up the initial premises for the project, these would be:

• Portugal has one of the most advanced and inclusive legal frameworks regarding sexual orientation and gender identities
• In 2019, the country was listed as one of the top 10 countries in the world for LGBTQ+ people to travel
• LGBTQ-specialised touristic products are scarce and clustered around Lisbon and Porto
• The Portuguese people do not usually express homophobic attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people, although behaviours may slightly differ across the territory

With this context in mind, how should we approach the first campaign to position Portugal as a gay-friendly destination? 

Portugal’s position in the LGBTQ+ travel market

The Handbook on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Travel Segment [2], published by the European Travel Commission, laid some particular trends we understood to be essential:

• Exclusively ‘gay spaces’ are likely to continue their decline
• The concept of ‘gay travel’ will become more inclusive as stereotypes become even less relevant making the concept of ‘gay holiday’, understood in its narrow sense, likely to become more diffuse
• The internet will continue to drive change in the offline world
• Travel will exert a strong attraction for LGBTQ+ people in emerging outbound markets
• LGBTQ+ events will be the catalyst for exploring destinations more widely
• LGBTQ+ travellers from mature outbound markets will go increasingly ‘off the beaten track’.

The Portuguese context reveals excellent opportunities along these trends. As a first intuition, it seemed clear to us that safety, high-quality holidays and family time would be first priorities among the LGBTQ+ people visiting us, but we needed a quantitative and qualitative grasp of this reality. 

To do so, we resorted to social listening tools to perceive what sort of words were being used to describe the “Portugal experience”. After researching some of the most relevant hashtags, we tracked publications in blogs, videos and posts in Youtube, Facebook and Instagram that were using a combination of #lgbttravel, #gaytravel, #lesbiantravel, #portugal, #gayportugal, among others. This allowed us to understand how tourists were describing their experiences, and it was paramount for the campaign’s content strategy and community building. Below you can read some of the heartwarming testimonials in the early phase of the project.

Furthermore, we built a survey that was shared through online communities bringing additional insights to the campaign. The survey reached 197 respondents from 35 countries including the United States (35.5%), United Kingdom (9.1%), France (6.1%), Brazil (4.6%), Canada (3.6%), Spain (3.6%), among others. From the 197 answers given, the general perception about Portugal was extremely positive, with the country being viewed as safe, tolerant and inclusive. Portugal benefits from a very positive reputation among the LGBTQ+ community surveyed, namely due to the social environment of acceptance and respect that travellers experience in the locations they visit. Many of the respondents claimed to want to return; some even chose to move to Portugal after their initial visit, while others revealed positive expectations for the country given the reputation that precedes it. 

The hype around the country was reflected in the high number of responses that point to stays in the year of 2019, confirming the good health of the national tourism sector prior to the Covid-19 crisis of 2020.

Contrary to the preconception that people in the LGBTQ+ community mostly seek destinations with highly specific offers related to nightlife and entertainment, the results found in this survey show strong demand for touristic activities in more diverse areas and across the entire market – art and culture; architecture and urbanism; nature and beach; and gastronomy were the points of interest most mentioned by respondents.

Some of the insights derived from the survey presented to LGBTQ+ travellers visiting or planning a visit to Portugal:

Crafting a proudly Portuguese brand

With the previous insights as tools, we now needed to bring the project to life. “Proudly Portugal” was the name Variações had already chosen as a seed for the brand but it still lacked a visual definition and a cohesive brand strategy. Given that Art, Culture, Nature and Beach were the most relevant vectors from our survey, we wanted to make sure that the “Proudly Portugal” brand reflected this essence through its visuals. Extensive research was conducted to bootstrap our creative process, primarily focused on:

• Semiotics of the LGBTQ community
• LGBTQ references in the Portuguese History
• Renowned visual artists such as Amadeo Souza Cardozo, Joaquim Rodrigo and Maria Vieira da Silva
• Typographers and Portuguese Designers including José Brandão and Sebastião Rodrigues
• Portuguese tiles and flowery patterns
• Old brand identities in the tourism sector
• Brand identities related to products in the LGBTQ+ community

During this research process, we came across an excerpt of a poem by Álvaro de Campos, one of the many identities of Fernando Pessoa.

“After all, the best way to travel is to feel.
To feel everything in every way.”

Written by one of the most renowned poets in Portuguese literature, we immediately felt that this excerpt was a metaphor for everything the LGBTQ+ traveller looks for in Portugal: to feel welcomed, to feel safe, to feel love.

After several iterations and brainstorms, we came up with a set of key visuals that defined the brand as a whole and would further expand into the campaign. These included:

• Primary colours: pink, as seen in different buildings across the country and deep blue, rooted in our ocean;
• LGBTQ+ related symbols: equal, heart, circles, lips, eyelashes and triangle;
• The “Rainbow Streak”: the rainbow is the most widespread visual element for the LGBTQ+ community. We reinterpreted this element as a rainbow line imprinted with movement, standing for the flux of people across countries but also a flux of progress towards inclusivity in Portugal;
• Photography: architectural elements, natural or landscape elements and photos representative of LGBTQ+ travellers;

The edgy symbol in the logotype for Proudly Portugal gets its inspiration from the Portuguese Cubist painter, Amadeo de Souza Cardozo. It represents an abstract face, composed of the brand symbols — a transformation from several diverse shapes, as a metaphor to the internal discovery of LGBTQ+ people. The wordmark was inspired by traditional Portuguese type fonts.

The concept for the campaign

Remember the excerpt of the poem by Álvaro de Campos we reencountered while designing the “Proudly Portugal” brand? It ended being the root inspiration for the campaign tagline as it provided the versatility we needed to address different aspects of the LGBTQ+ experience in the country. 

Variações immediately aligned with the idea, and we couldn’t feel prouder to include a reference to such a great name in Portuguese literature.

“Portugal. Travel to Feel.”

The campaign portrays the great diversity of LGBTQ+ travellers that choose our country to experience a myriad of adventures, showing different touristic opportunities, namely historic routes, family experiences, vibrant city life, sports/outdoor activities and romantic getaways. We first and foremost wanted to build a storytelling approach that could drive interested travellers, during their decision journey, to learn more about the brand, either through direct contact with the social media channels or through the website. The Proudly Portugal website provides information to learn more about Portugal as a leading travel destination, relevant places and experiences, including a searchable directory of LGBTQ-specific offers in the territory. Additionally, it provides visual and written testimonials of members of the brand’s community in the form of photography, video or written articles.

Five groups of characters were conceived from several target Personas we built during the strategy brainstorm sessions. These are meant to represent segments of the LGBTQ+ community informed by the insights we derived from the conducted surveys. As a matter of fact, the roles of Irina, Nick and Paul were played by people who had a similar background, be it the love for dance in Irina’s case or the lovely story of the gay couple that moved to Portugal, in Nick and Paul’s case.

With characters and story arcs constructed, the “Portugal. Travel to Feel.” campaign went into full speed mode. It was developed and implemented according to the following vectors:

1. Release a set of films depicting 5 different groups of characters through the brand’s social media to raise awareness of the brand and to drive interest in learning more about each character’s story arc;
2. In the website, each character is devoted a specific landing page where its experience in Portugal is further developed, guiding interested people through those experiences and recommending related LGBTQ touristic products to help them plan their trip;
3. Engage and build community through social media, especially Facebook and Instagram, reaching micro-influencers in the segment to provide user-generated content, recognition and testimonials;
4. Create content that showcases Portugal’s unique selling points for the community (e.g. weddings, holidays, romantic getaways), unusual traditions and Pride events in the country, always approached from the LGBTQ+ lens;
5. Generate content covering the representation of Proudly Portugal in other countries, either through events or national and international tourism fairs;
6. Increase the reach of Proudly Portugal and the campaign through Facebook and Instagram advertising, Google Search Ads, Youtube Ads, advertising in LGBTQ-dating apps; print advertising in LGBTQ+ tourism magazines, among others.

The “Portugal. Travel to Feel.” films were recorded over 10 days in Lisbon, Porto, Peniche, Faro, Loulé and Quinta do Lago. A special thanks is due to Marcos Clímaco for helping us shape the campaign and Débora Umbelino for the kind hours dedicated to creating the original music.

You can check the full set of videos for the “Portugal. Travel to Feel” campaign in Proudly Portugal’s Youtube channel.

Planning digital content while building community

To start planning content for the digital channels, we first listed a series of content categories to cover directed at the target audiences of Proudly Portugal. These included solo travellers, gay couples, lesbian couples, urban places, nature places, gay travel advice, entertainment & events, LGBTQ+ rights, traveller testimonials and user-generated content. Every piece of content was to be developed according to one of 3 axes: Inspire, Inform, Engage.

We added to the mix the coverage of events through Instagram Stories. These events were either organised or promoted by Variações as a way to raise awareness to Proudly Portugal abroad and included:

• Lisboa Arraial Pride and Porto Pride 2019
• Proudly Portugal stage at Mado Madrid Orgullo (Madrid’s Pride event), featuring Portuguese artists such as Blaya, Fado Bicha, Drag Queen DJ Filha da Mãe, Sindykatz, as well as several artists from Trumps Lisbon and Zoom Porto
• Local Pride events in cities such as Amarante, Viseu, Coimbra, Algarve, Madeira, among other regions.
• Presence in Travel Fairs such as FITUR Gay LGBTQ+

Once we defined content types and formats for the brand’s communication strategy, it was time to start generating that content: from photography sessions in selected Portuguese locations to video and motion design to convey brand-related messages through the movement of the “rainbow streak”.

Examples of publications in Proudly Portugal’s Instagram feed:

By incentivising the use of the hashtag #proudlyportugal, we were able to accomplish two different goals: stimulate user-generated content through photography – that played a significant role in the content strategy – and, at the same time, build meaningful relations with people from the LGBTQ+ community. We are deeply thankful to everyone that welcomed the project open-heartedly. The travel and love stories we got to know are growing evidence that Portugal is on the right track towards a more inclusive society. 

The relationships built on social media channels allowed us to give centre stage to the community through the Proudly Portugal website (proudlyportugal.pt) both through a multimedia panel in the website’s homepage and through written content in an interview format. This approach contributed significantly to the project’s goals by generating notoriety around the country’s real LGBTQ-related travel reality, told through the in-person experiences.

If you’re interested in understanding the guidelines we used to design the interface for Proudly Portugal’s website, head to our Behance and check this project.

Results and recognition

Despite the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the campaign results were really positive: nearly 5.000.000 impressions across digital channels, with a vibrant community of people spread around almost 50 different countries.

The website for Proudly Portugal got the public vote at Awwwards, with an “Honorable Mention”.

Furthermore, the films in the campaign “Portugal. Travel to Feel.” got recognitions at several film festivals, namely:

• “The best of  – Business Tourism” at Terres Travel Festival – Films and Creativity 2020.
• 1st Prize in LGBTQ Tourism in the National Competition of ART&TUR – International Tourism Film Festival 2020
• 2nd Prize in LGBTQ Tourism in the National Competition of ART&TUR – International Tourism Film Festival 2020
• 2nd Prize in LGBTQ Tourism in the International Competition of ART&TUR – International Tourism Film Festival 2020
• Nominee for “Film promoting a Tourism Product” at Landing Madrid 2020

We take great pride in this first year of working with Proudly Portugal and the “Portugal. Travel to Feel.” campaign. The response has been heartwarming, and we believe that, albeit with an undoubtfully long road ahead still, the project is on the right track to position Portugal in the world as a leading LGBTQ+ travel destination, with its unique attitude towards inclusivity.

You can learn more about Proudly Portugal (and spread the word btw) through the following channels:

Website: proudlyportugal.pt
Instagram: @proudlyportugal
Facebook: proudlyportugal

check other case studies