Profile and demographics

In my research I particularly wanted to compare the US market with the Dutch one, so I wanted the participants mainly to be from these two markets. However, any entry was appreciated, also to add to the population.

I mainly wanted to look at mainstream companies, making the ‘cross over’ into the gay market, but also invited gay and lesbian business to complete the survey to get a feeling for the market, and insight in their motivations and experience. Latter are most often independent professionals with little or no staff.

Regional distribution

There were 145 participants from the Netherlands and 696 from the USA. There were 67 participating Canadian companies, 43 entries came from the UK, 39 from New Zealand, 11 Australian, 7 South African. These were the most important contingencies.

Type of company

568 companies listed themselves as “commercial”, 406 chose the option “provider of professional services” (which in most cases was commercial as well), 112 described themselves as charity or non-profit, 61 were tourist offices (a.k.a. “CVB” or Convention & Visitors Bureau), 17 were branch organizations, 14 were educational facilities, 8 were (semi-) governmental. Some 87 participants did not choose either of above options.

To distinguish between mainstream companies and gay companies, I posed the question “Is your organization LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) owned and operated?” In fact, this was another way of asking “are you gay?”.

• 471 answered No.
• 493 answered Yes.

Charities, Governmental Organizations, Tourist Offices and Educational facilities (in total 222) did not get this qualifier.

Field of activity

The majority of companies (close to 70%) comes from five main branches: Travel / Tourism / Hospitality (25% of mainstream companies and 19% LGBT owned and operated), Real Estate / Home / House / Decoration (15% and 12%), Financial Services (8% and 9%), Other Professional Services (12% and 19%) and (Mental) Healthcare (7% and 10%).

Geographical distribution

The area of operation is largely split between the USA (48% and 46%) and The Netherlands (17%, 5%), with other significant segments coming from Canada (7%, 7%), the UK (5%, 7%), Worldwide (2%, 7%) and New Zealand (2%, 5%).