Tempe is starting new outreach efforts to encourage gay and lesbian tourists to visit the city.
The city's Convention and Visitors Bureau recently launched a separate Web portal specifically geared to gays and lesbians, said Toni Smith, communications manager for the bureau.
The site, launched in late December, features a rainbow-colored flower and contains information on activities and places to visit in Tempe, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning-oriented events.
The bureau will also bring editors and writers from several gay travel publications, including the Gay and Lesbian Times and Instinct Magazine, to the city, Smith added. The goal is to convince these writers to publish articles about Tempe in their magazines.
"I think Tempe is a very progressive, diverse community, which tends to be very inclusive," Smith said.
More travelers from the gay and lesbian community means higher sales tax revenue for Tempe, she added.
These efforts came after the Tempe Convention and Visitors Bureau joined the Greater Phoenix Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in 2003 and the Out & Equal Workplace Summit sold out the Wyndham Buttes Resort in 2004.
The city began researching the LGBTQ community in 2002. The LGBTQ community's demographics made it an attractive market to lure to the city, Smith said.
A 2005 survey by Community Marketing, Inc., a gay marketing research organization, found 96 percent of gay respondents took at least one short leisure trip during the last year, compared to 55 percent of the general population.
Also, 98 percent of respondents said a destination's gay-friendly reputation influenced their choice to travel there, the survey stated.
Alex Barrett, a pre-business sophomore originally from New Jersey, said he didn't think Tempe was currently a gay-friendly city.
People don't seem very willing to express their sexuality here, he said.
"Back home everyone knew each other and accepted if you were gay or not," Barrett said.
Jimmy Quinn, a non-profit management freshman and member of ASU's LGBTQ Coalition, said he hoped the city's efforts would convince more gay and lesbian people to visit and even move to Tempe.
"I do think Tempe is a fairly liberal city that is accepting of queer people, but not 100 percent," Quinn said.
Tempe has also marketed itself to organizers of special events, such as youth sports tournaments.
These groups have come to Tempe through a successful competitive bidding process, Smith said. Event organizers often require every city to submit a bid outlining what the city has to offer.
But the growing perception of Tempe as a major destination city is the biggest reason so many events have come to the city in recent years, said Travis Dray, special events supervisor for Tempe.
Organizers of the P.F. Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Marathon and the Orange County Choppers approached Tempe to host them because of the city's reputation, he said.
Tempe's lake, vibrant downtown with lots of shops and restaurants and major university all in close proximity to each other make it an attractive destination, Dray said.
ASU's presence is especially attractive for college student-oriented events like the St. Patty's Day Throwdown, Dray said
"You have a built-in audience," Dray added.
Dray said these factors helped increase the number of event days booked at Tempe Beach Park from 30 in 2000 to 130 last year. Before this year even started, the park's 2006 calendar was already filled.
Reach the reporter at grayson.steinberg@asu.edu.
