In working on another article about LGBTQ travel, I had a conversation with an operator of a gay and lesbian tourism company about the resiliency of his core audience. While his colleagues at mainstream tour companies were still hurting for business after the 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2008 economic crisis, his members were ready to start traveling again.

This led me down a rabbit hole of research, including eight different subject-expert interviews and reviewing data from several surveys and polls. While I was busy doing my job as a travel writer, pulling together the information and pitching it to magazines, another publication beat me to the punch. It was the type of heartbreak moment every writer experiences at least once in her career, and I almost didn’t continue with the story.

On closer examination, their story’s angle was just different enough—plus I had more research to back up my theories. So I forged on, and created this piece, which was well received by my own LGBTQ colleagues, and the folx I’d worked with at the International LGBTQ+ Travel Association, who generously shared some of their research.