GAY MEN AND TOURISM: Gay Men's Tourism Perspectives and Expectations

All over the world, companies realized that gay has an monetary power and make up a new market which only involves gay orientated projects and campaignes. In Europe gays have % 6 percentage in total population and they also keep in reserve % 10 part of tourism. When we give thought to these percentages, it could be said that gay tourism market can be an important source for Turkey. The aim of this study was to display gay men's tourism perspectives and their tourism expectations. For this reason, a questionnaire applied to 71 gay men in Istanbul by using snowball sampling. To analize the data SPSS for Windows 11.00 is used. Analysis results show that, gay men prefer destinations where they can feel themselves free, wouldn’t encounter with prejudicial behavior and find high service quality. Also, the other finding was that gay men ready to pay high payment for quality.