YOUR QUEER-FRIENDLY COMPASS

LONELY PLANET PUBLISHES AN LGBTI COFFEE-TABLE BOOK

- STORY: STEVEN MOITY / NYT

In the half-century since its first travel guide, Across Asia On The Cheap, Lonely Planet has grown into a global behemoth, having sold 150 million printed guides advising budget travellers on where to go, stay and eat in destinations ranging from Scandinavia to South Africa. But until now the company had never published a stand-alone guide for LGBTI travellers.

The LGBTQ+ Travel Guide, by Alicia Valenski, features more than 50 queer-friendly destinations in a coffee-table-size book, a departure from the company’s usual packable paperbacks. Also unlike the usual guides, this one explores destinations like Brooklyn, Berlin and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, entirely through local voices.

Lonely Planet, which has been including a section on LGBTI travel in its guidebooks for decades, is a strong player in digital guides through its website and app. So why was this the moment to debut a glossy guidebook that would barely fit into most backpacks?

I spoke to Valenski, 32, in late April near Marsha P. Johnson State Park in Brooklyn, which is featured in the guide.

Why publish an LGBTI travel guide now?

Lonely Planet was poised to publish a book about queer travel in 2019 or 2020. And then the world stopped. And so once they were ready to pick it back up, it was like 2022 or 2023.