Vacationer Magazine – One Year Later
Vacationer Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, Kwin Mosby, takes a quick look back as the new LGBTQ+ travel publication celebrates its first anniversary.
It’s hard to believe that Vacationer Magazine has hit its one-year mark! When I accepted the position as Editor-in-Chief, I didn’t realize the enormous weight that would be placed on my shoulders. Yes, I’m a strong proponent of diversity, but who knew trying to ensure that we capture the entire LGBTQ+ community would be a daunting task albeit most of the stress was self-imposed.
However, over the past year, we’ve begun to sow the seeds of a new path and hit a few cool milestones and accomplishments along the way. In just one year, we’ve published more than 600 articles that range from travel news and queer events to seasonal content and features about fabulous destinations, such as Porto, Italy’s Puglia Region, and the French Riviera.
Even though we are always in an analytic mode to decipher what our audience – 73% U.S./Canada, 19% U.K./Europe, and 3% Asia – wants, one thing that has become quite apparent is that there’s still an incredible need for a platform to tell ALL of our stories but from our unique perspectives. We noticed a resounding response from our audience when we publish content that focuses on travel as it relates to the transgender, nonbinary, lesbian, queer person of color, and plus-size individuals who travel. Again, it’s great that we’ve published 600+ articles, but we still have more ground to cover and work to do, if out of those 600 articles, we’ve only published 120 articles that featured lesbian travelers or related topics, and 70 featured trans and nonbinary travelers or related topics. We still have a long way to go to ensure that all voices across our community are fully heard and seen.
That being said, we’re a work in progress and we try to make sure we cover travelers who may not get a lot of attention, such as queer folx who travel as a triad or throuple. It’s a unique dynamic when it comes to traveling. The lack of exposure about traveling as a triad is probably one of the reasons why it’s one of our top-performing articles. The same can be said about content that addresses lesbian travel, points of interest, and events. Our features about lesbian-owned Downton Valley, a list of fun annual events for queer womxn (like The Dinah), and interviews with celebs like Kristen Kish and Captain Sandy Yawn from Bravo’s Below Deck Mediterranean are a few that come to mind.
Speaking about content that works for us, at the beginning of the year, we wanted to start the year off with a special salute to the queer-friendly small towns in the U.S. Why? Because we always hear about big cities like New York City, Miami, and San Francisco, but rarely do small towns like New Hope, Pennsylvania, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, or Corning, New York get any coverage for being safe havens for LGBTQ+ travelers to visit. Not surprisingly, to date, our article, 22 Small LGBTQ+ Small Cities in the U.S., remains the highest performing piece of content on our website, proving that we need to spread our queer love to smaller underserved communities.
And much like the different towns featured on that coveted list, we’ve also been able to showcase the diversity of our community with our weekly franchise, Vacationer of the Week, highlighting LGBTQ+ travelers, travel industry leaders, writers, content creators, and influencers. And we’ve recently changed the direction of our digital front covers each month to feature people instead of destinations because a glossy photo of Piccadilly Circus or Buckingham Palace doesn’t capture diversity as well as the photo of the founder of UK Black Pride. We’re an evolving travel publication that will continue to pivot to ensure we celebrate all of our differences.
As I wrap up this retrospective for our first anniversary, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how incredibly proud I am of all the hard work of my new righthand staff writer John Hernandez as well as our growing stable of contributing writers based in Canada, the UK, Australia, and beyond. Your voices have been essential in telling our stories and our passion for exploring the world.
And even though it feels as though we’ve just taken our first baby step, the future looks exceedingly bright thanks to Vacationer Magazine’s readers and our day-one supporters. I’m looking at you Gray Jones Media fam, which includes our bosses, Richard Jones and Robin Gray, our social media team headed by Martin Lathbury as well as my fellow editorial team colleagues Merryn Johns at Queer Forty, Kyle Jackson at Bear World Magazine, and Aimee Hart at Gayming Magazine.
Many thanks for everyone’s support as we continue to forge our own path, encouraging you and the rest of the LGBTQ+ community to come along on our journey.
