Posted by
K on Friday, June 01, 2007 2:28:03 PM
So one of the Townhall users brought this new website to my attention:
http://www.southwest.com/gaytravel/It seems that Southwest airlines is trying to target the gay and lesbian community for some extra profits. This concept is so confusing to me - yes, I'll admit, it's a nice attempt for Southwest to try to get some extra business in the gay community over their competition, but I'm thinking once this word gets out many non-gay fliers are going to be pretty P-Oed.
The first question I have is why them? Why single out the gay community and make them feel so special? Maybe it's because
according to the Association of Travel Marketing Executives, gay and lesbian travelers account for about 10 percent of the total travel market, spending $47.3 billion annually. It would make sense that Southwest wants a piece of that pie - but why are they trying to hide that by stating on their gay travel website "we take pride in partnering with you." What a crock. Southwest takes pride in making money, not in respecting the gay community.
The second question I have is why are they not targeting other big money-making groups? When companies pull stunts such as this I can only predict their goal is publicity - and let's face it - who's going to care if Southwest dedicates a website to the elderly or married or straight people. They want the WOW factor that supporting the gay community so bluntly provides.
I thought this whole deal Southwest was pulling was pretty harmless - especially since it looks like they're not offering any real discounted prices for gay fliers; they're just displaying popular gay vacation spots - then I realized that they weren't the first ones to have this money-making idea. Orbitz.com, the leading online travel company, also has a gay travel website:
http://www.orbitz.com/gaytravel/
Through Orbitz's gay and lesbian travel site, a gay flier actually can get reductions through special gay traveler's codes to enter when booking travel.
This innovation leads me to a whole new slew of questions, the main ones being: how are they going to ensure only gay fliers are receiving these discounts? Do you need to prove you're gay? Will they stop you at the security desk? Is their a big rainbow on the ticket?
Trust me, I'm sure this might sound very anti-gay right now, and some of you very well may support that. Actually, my goal of this is not gay-bashing at all. Surprising to most, I don't despise homosexuals on any level, unlike many of my Christian brethren. Quite frankly the whole homosexual topic is one I don't normally like to talk about because everyone expects me to want to them to die a horrible death, usually because what they read in the Bible. Let me make something clear - I'm well aware of what the Bible says, and I'm shocked sometimes when I see people use it's verses totally out of context. But because they do, we have Christians in our society that instead of loving their neighbor as themselves, they love the people they feel are equal and choose to discriminate against everyone else.
So what's my bottom line? Although this is really surprising, and I'm sure once it becomes more well-known to the general public it will be a huge fiasco, the only thing that ticks me off about this is I can't get a discount on flying because I'm NOT gay. When they make a straight fliers travel discount website, I'll let you know.
Found on google