FRENCH POLYNESIA
24 Gscene
Leave it all behind
No one’s going to be sorry to see the back of 2020, and hopes are on a new dawn come January with the chance to get away from it all. Jaq Bayles goes on a journey of discovery for LGBTQ+ dream destinations
) This year anyone whose travel plans
went ahead smoothly will have been in the minority. With flights grounded during lockdown and the pandemic leading the government to constantly and seemingly randomly change rules around which countries were ‘safe’ to visit once lockdown was lifted, the overseas holiday market has been hammered. Anyone who managed to get away was sunbathing under a cloud of uncertainty
about whether they would need to drop their flip flops and return home at a moment’s notice if they were to avoid two weeks of self-isolation – the situation hardly made for a relaxing break. Little surprise, then, that many turned to the UK staycation, swapping ouzo and calamari in Lesvos for beer and chips in Littlehampton, ditching the pelicans of Mykonos in favour of the gulls of Margate, and replacing hiking in Tuscany with a stroll around Truro.
Alliteration allusions aside, it turned out that many people suddenly woke up to the fact that Britain actually has an awful lot to offer, and some experts predict that a new mindset around holidays is not going to go away.
Host Unusual specialises in unique properties for holiday stays and has a web page dedicated solely to the many that are designated LGBTQ-friendly. Brighton-based co-founder and director Alex Wilson says this was to ensure no one experienced the sort of “frosty reception” he and his partner had encountered at check-ins in some parts of the world, and he adds there has been “a massive rise” in searches for UK properties. He says: “Everyone’s switched focus to staycations and realised there’s a lot more they can do at home. With the situation changing so frequently they are worried about going overseas. There are unique things people can do at home, like stay in a WWII operations bunker or in a prison-themed room. This is going to cause a permanent change in people’s mindset. People are a lot more sensitive to reducing their carbon footprint and are a lot more vocal about it now. I do see it as more of a permanent trend.” And, with necessity being the mother of invention and all that, there has been an incremental increase in ever-more quirky places in which to take your staycation – hobbit homes, treehouses, a tent suspended MALTA
