Cruise Control

PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

Cruise Control

VACAYA completely reinvents the all-gay cruise and all-inclusive gay resort concepts by opening up the experiences to lesbians, bisexuals, trans persons, queer men/women, those questioning their sexuality, intersex, asexual, pansexual, and polyamorous individuals, as well as gay men who’ve enjoyed the typical gay cruise experience.

By Fred W. Wright Jr.

What if you gave a party and everybody came? That’s the sense of success savored by Patrick Gunn, co-founder and CMO of VACAYA, a niche travel company in Miami that creates cruise and resort packages for the LGBTQ community.

For nearly five years, VACAYA has built its brand by catering to the LGBTQ community with luxury cruises and all-inclusive resort packages. They have been so successful that its November cruise to Antarctica sold out its 200 vacancies in just 10 days.

That Antarctica cruise, scheduled for Dec. 6-17, is typical of VACAYA’s packages. The guests and crew will sail aboard Le Boreal, a 413-foot French-owned luxury cruise ship designed for royalty and sailings to the southernmost continent and other destinations.

“With a maximum capacity of 200 passengers, Le Boreal will allow us to explore this virtually untouched land rich in wildlife in small, intimate groups, all in an atmosphere of undeniable luxury and casual elegance,” according to VACAYA.

The next offering will be a Caribbean cruise Feb. 12-19. Since this will be the official celebration of the company’s fifth year, details are being kept close by management at this point, Gunn said.

Gunn promises, though, there will be “lots of entertainment opportunities and surprises I can’t reveal at this moment.

Most people who know these cruises, when we celebrate a big milestone like this, we pull out all the stops – commemorative merchandise (and) high level of star-studded entertainment.”

How was VACAYA born? The co-founders had an idea “how we might be able to off er the LGBTQ community something that’s never happened before,” Gunn said in an interview with Embrace Magazine. “The key diff erence between ourselves and our competitors [is] we buy out the entire ship or entire resort and staff and entertainment and invite the LGBTQ community to come and enjoy that space with like-minded people in a space that’s very safe for them.”

It’s a financial gamble that has, so far, paid off for VACAYA. The company is hoping to book to destinations never visited by a LGBTQ group of any size, whether it be Africa, the Seychelles or, now, Antarctica in November. The Antarctica cruise sellout “was a shock to us. It was one of the biggest risks in our company history,” Gunn said.

“We founded our company on differences we wanted to off er,” Gunn said. We are welcoming to all LGBTQ members, no matter where you stand in the spectrum. We’re inclusive of all body types. Some competitors have historically focused on one letter – gay men, lesbian women. We are really for all types of people who want to travel in our space.

“That includes straight friends. We’re very welcoming to any straight allies who believe love is love,” Gunn noted.

Coming up with VACAYA as the company’s name took some research. “When we were going to name our company, we wanted a word that looked beautiful and has sentiment in the LGBTQ world,” Gunn said.

A search through an English language dictionary proved futile, he said. But then a lexicon of street slang and code language used by members of the LGBTQ community in London in the 18th and 19th centuries turned up Polari. Since homosexuality was illegal in Britain for centuries, this relatively secret language developed its own highly descriptive words.

The result was VACAYA. “It’s a beautiful word in writing but its actual definition is ‘melodious instrument,’” Gun explained. The company adopted the word and put it in all capital letters as its very distinctive brand.

A key factor for the company’s success so far, Gunn said, is its approach to the entertainment provided on its cruises. VACAYA selects its own entertainers and celebrity headliners tailored to its audience. “We bring on our own...superior level of LGBTQ entertainers – comedians, Broadway, cabaret, and drag acts.” Some examples from the past – Leslie Jordan, Katharine McPhee, David Foster, Steve Grand, Ty Herndon, Alex Newell, Kimberly Locke and Kristin Chenoweth whom Gunn calls “our Godmother.”

There are two other distinctions that Gunn feels separates VACAYA from other companies that package LGBTQ travel.

“First, we believe in balance,” he said. Many cruises invite guests to party until they drop – or at least until the wee hours – often leading to late mornings and ports not enjoyed. “We love a good party,” Gunn said, “but we also believe in making sure our guests [are able] to get up in the morning and get into the port and not miss out on any of the culture.”

Gunn’s company is also an advocate of guests giving back to the culture of the people their tours visit. “We are philan- thropic-minded; our guests share that with us. We’ll give back to communities we visit in two ways,” he said.

Guests have the opportunity on vacation to give back with sweat equity or they can donate financially. On a VACAYA trip to a Mexican resort, “We adopted an orphanage. Our guests (brought) backpacks full of school supplies and donated to the orphanage,” Gunn said.

VACAYA prices naturally vary with the package. They can range from $99 per person for a resort to $2,000 and up for a luxury cruise, Gunn said, all the way up to $20,000 for a single suite.

What’s ahead for VACAYA? “We have major goals that we set for ourselves around diversifying our audience,” Gunn said. “Lesser-served community members like Blacks, bisexuals, trans. They are welcome (and) they are part of our existence – a utopia for the entire LGBTQ community.”

TO LEARN MORE about VACAYA, visit myvacaya.com, Facebook: myvacaya