PHOTO: Greater Fort Lauderdale will host the Southern Comfort Transgender Conference, the largest transgender conference in North America, in 2015, 2016 and 2017 after more than 24 years in Atlanta. Lexi Dee, conference president, is pictured with Richard Gray, managing director of the LGBT market for the CVB. (Photo courtesy of Fort Lauderdale CVB)

Unquestionably, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau is a pioneer when it comes to marketing to the LGBT community, having creating its first LGBT campaign as far back as 1996. Now, the CVB is furthering those efforts with the launch of an initiative that focuses on ways in which to deliver welcoming and authentic travel experiences to transgender visitors.

To get the ball rolling on the initiative, the CVB has been consulting with the Broward Sheriff’s Office and the Pride Center At Equality Park of South Florida, which has a transgender department, about ways in which to be more sensitive to needs of transgender travelers, said Richard Gray, the CVB’s managing director for the LGBT market. It is also adopting best practices and training for CVB members and others employed in the tourism and hospitality industry, and has hosted roundtable discussions with Fort Lauderdale community leaders.

“It’s a work in progress, and we’re tweaking as we go along,” said Gray. “But our heart’s in the right place, as is our direction and motivation.”

His inspiration to create the initiative came from the story of 92-year-old Rabina Asti, a World War II pilot living as a transgender woman who was denied survival benefits by the Social Security Administration after her husband’s death. “Her story moved me to tears and inspired me greatly to do something worthwhile,” he said.

Gray said his first order of business was to equip himself with the information he needed to get the initiative rolling. “We know a lot about gay travelers, we know a lot about lesbian travelers, but we really don’t know anything about transgender travelers,” he said.

He commissioned an online study with Community Marketing & Insights, a San Francisco-based LGBT marketing group that has worked with the CVB for the last 15 years, to assess the needs of transgender travelers.

The study, which is the first of its kind, surveyed 700 members of the transgender community, revealing that, on average, they are predominately economy travelers who typically travel twice a year, stay at medium-sized hotels, and enjoy shopping, gambling and cultural activities.

Top destinations include New York, San Francisco, Atlanta Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago and Fort Lauderdale. Gray said Atlanta, which scored third, had, for the last 24 years, hosted the Southern Comfort Transgender Conference, the largest transgender conference in North America – but lost out to Fort Lauderdale, which will host it in 2015, 2016 and 2017, Gray said.

“Securing the transgender conference was very rewarding for us,” said Gray. “They appreciate what we’re doing, and that’s what inspired them to move their conference to Fort Lauderdale.”

In other findings, 58 percent of transgender people aged 18 to 39 travel alone, while 65 percent of respondents over 40 travel solo. “One of the things that we learned was a lot of them are married and in relationships and their wives or their husbands don’t know that they’re transgender,” said Gray, adding that transgender individuals are often leading a double life, with a suitcase of men or women’s clothing hidden away.

In other developments, Gray noted that the transgender initiative is expected to help the destination woo a larger share of Millennial travelers, both gay and straight. “They don’t like to be tourists, they like to be travelers, and they’ll see the fact that we’re a very diverse well-rounded and thoughtful destination,” he said.

In the final analysis, Gray views the transgender initiative as an organic evolution in the CVB’s LGBT marketing efforts. “Greater Fort Lauderdale is the LGBT capital of Florida and also one of the top LGBT destinations in the country,” he said. “ I felt that as a destination, creating a transgender initiative was the next step,” he said.