Gay Men And Hospitality Industry

[SanFranciscan]

I was just surfing around the Internet one day and came upon a couple of threads about gay men and the hospitality industry. I just found one of them again under Yahoo Answers. Yet on both sites the question was why there are so many gay men in the hospitality industry with one claiming that gay men are attracted to people professions with uniforms. Do you have any comments on this?

I figured that there would be a lot of gays in hospitality because it is such a huge industry all over the world that there would be a lot of people from nearly any category working within it. I don't remember any malicious tone in the question. The person posting the question appeared to be just making an obserservation. Do you agree with him or her that gays are perhaps over-represented in the hospitality industry? I certainly encountered a number of people who gave me the impression that they were gay while I was working in the theme parks, but these companies are the largest employers in Central Florida so I thought nothing of it.

 

[Tinkerboy00]

Most of my gay male friends work in the service industry. One is trying to become an actor, the other is a chef.

A few others are doing so while in school, or they just have been with the companies they work for for a very long time now.

 

[DrGaellon]

Historically, the hospitality industry has just been more open to gays and lesbians, especially in the bad old days when one had to be closeted. Particularly, the airline industry was a welcome place for gay men; the traveling life of an air steward made a convenient excuse for not settling down and marrying.

 

[jeanigor]

I think it also has to do with the disproportionate face time workers in the hospitality industry get. A waiter/hotel clerk/theme park attendant/etc. sees how many people during a shift? I don't think the guy working the injection molding machine, preparing legal briefs, or changing oil in your car interact as much with the public. We are everywhere. Its just easier to see in places where you look more often.

 

[SanFranciscan]

Historically, the hospitality industry has just been more open to gays and lesbians, especially in the bad old days when one had to be closeted. Particularly, the airline industry was a welcome place for gay men; the traveling life of an air steward made a convenient excuse for not settling down and marrying.

Funny you should mention this. I am following a blog written by a flight attendant. She is a female but one of her columns is about gay male flight attendants. The gay men who agreed to write for her didn't get back to her about it so she got a heterosexual former male flight attendant to write it. It is in my stack of saved files so I will be interested to see what he says.

Since I am looking into working in destination marketing now that I have left Disney and filed for disability like my former supervisor told me to do, this subject has really started to fascinate me more than ever as it is my chance to stay in the tourism field that I love instead of living on the dole. Moving from one tourist town to another and working with tourists in both cities, I have seen some truth to the view that gay people are indeed "Teflon" (spelling?) tourists less likely to cancel vacations when the media spills disturbing news about the economy or the safety of travel.

 

[Chuck S]

It may be that a lot of gay men are just have a good personality for service sector jobs. I worked retail for years because I enjoyed the customer interaction. Of course, there were a few obnoxious customers, but overall people were pretty pleasant and it sure wasn't boring.