Spartacus Gay Travel Index (GTI)

Spartacus is publishing the Gay Travel Index since 2012. Every year, we take a close look at 202 countries and regions. There are still many places in the world where LGBT must fear for their happiness and safety. Due to the sometimes wide differences in the world, it can happen that holidaymakers endanger themselves simply by unwise behaviour. In order to support the safety of gay tourists worldwide, we publish the Gay Travel Index. It serves as a first guideline – you can find more detailed information about your travel destinations on our website and blog.

The SPARTACUS GAY TRAVEL INDEX, updated annually, provides travelers with information on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT+) situation in a total of 213 countries and regions. The US Index provides information on the fifty states of the U.S.

The evaluation criteria are continuously refined to reflect the visibility of a wider spectrum of the queer community. For example, the rights of intersexuals or a third gender option are evaluated, as is the welcome fact that conversion procedures are being banned by more and more countries. The section on gay marketing highlights the growing importance of target group-oriented tourism for queer travelers. The index for 2024 includes the new category “Censorship”, which takes into account laws such as a ban on the display of rainbow flags or the distribution of books with LGBT+ content.

The SPARTACUS GAY TRAVEL INDEX attempts to strike a balance between the rights of the local LGBT+ community and the demands of queer vacationers. The focus is on both the safety of queer people in the respective country and the increasing visibility of grievances. We are convinced that there are vacationers who choose countries where the community is an accepted and beloved part of society; likewise, there are also vacationers who deliberately want to take a trip to a country in order to be able to engage in a dialogue with the oppressed local queer community. The index is intended to provide both stances with a valid basis for evaluation when making travel decisions.

Various sources such as www.equaldex.com, https://ilga.org/, transrespect.org, and freely available portals of NGOs such as Human Rights Watch as well as government organizations were used in the compilation of this index.

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Rating system

When creating the index, our focus is on political decisions affecting the queer community, legal changes or acts of violence and prohibitions. Positive developments in the respective countries count as plus points, negative ones as minus points. Categories include among others: marriage equality and anti-discrimination laws, sodomy laws, pride parade bans and hate crimes. Political developments such as marriage equality might at first only affect the LGBT community of the respective country. But every step towards equality is a step forward towards social acceptance and has therefore a direct impact on holidaymakers.

The categories have different levels. If a category has three levels, a maximum of three points can be awarded.
The only exception is the death penalty: A country gets one minus point if the death penalty for homosexual acts is anchored in the law but not executed. If the death penalty is still executed, the country gets five minus points. This ensures these countries rank at the bottom of the list.

Gay Travel Index USA

The legal situation for queer people varies greatly in the 50 US states. In the Gay Travel Index USA we therefore take a close look at the individual states. In doing so, we were able to adapt the categories specifically to the country and guarantee a closer look. We wanted to explicitly highlight the differences between the individual states.

In 2020, we removed some categories, for example marriage equality and HIV travel restrictions, because these are federal laws and all states would receive the same score. Instead, we have added new categories tailored to the USA, which emphasize the differences between the states: Hate crime laws, gay and trans panic defense, anti-discrimination legislation and queer infrastructure.

This way, we hope to create a detailed overview so that queer travelers know what to expect in each state.

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