While plenty of brands have spent two years quietly backing away from LGBTQ+ marketing, a new hospitality brand just launched in the opposite direction. Royal Grand Resorts opened in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica in July, built explicitly for gay men’s premium travel and positioned in the gap nobody filled — between the mainstream hotel that tolerates you and the ultra-luxury property most people can’t book. Owner Stanley Kania went to the hospitality trade press with it, citing IGLTA and Community Marketing & Insights research: 80%+ of LGBTQ+ travelers screen destinations for friendliness, and 72% research legal protections before they book. Which is exactly why the Costa Rica site selection isn’t incidental — first Central American country to legalize same-sex marriage, 99%+ renewable power, direct US flights. When your guests are researching a jurisdiction before they research your property, “where” is a brand attribute.
Every so often a brand launches with a positioning statement that names a gap the rest of us have been talking around for years. Royal Grand Resorts did that in July, opening in Manuel Antonio on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast with a thesis that’s worth reading closely whether or not you work in hospitality.
The thesis: gay men’s travel has a missing middle. There are mainstream hotels that will happily take the booking and put a rainbow flag in the lobby for four weeks a year. There are ultra-luxury properties at price points that exclude most of the market. Between those two, according to the brand, there hasn’t been much — and that in-between is where most travelers actually live.
What They Actually Said
The launch was announced via Hospitality Net on July 8, 2026 — and notably, in the trade press rather than only the queer press. That’s a deliberate choice, and a smart one.
“The research is unambiguous: gay male travelers are among the most valuable, most loyal, and most underserved guests in hospitality. Royal Grand Resorts was built in direct response to that gap — to create welcoming, high-quality spaces where gay men feel genuinely centered, not just accommodated. Costa Rica exemplifies exactly the kind of destination we had in mind: safe, breathtakingly beautiful, deeply sustainable, and ready for a new generation of gay travelers discovering it.”
— Stanley Kania, Owner, Royal Grand Resorts
“Centered, not just accommodated” is the line doing the work there. It’s the distinction between a property that will serve you and a property that was designed with you in mind — and it’s the same distinction we keep coming back to when we talk with hospitality clients about why a welcome page isn’t a strategy.
The brand’s stated offer is elevated experiences — curated programming, thoughtful design, community-focused amenities, and genuine inclusion — at price points that make quality gay travel accessible to more people. The property itself is an adults-only, clothing-optional resort with 30 rooms, a full-service restaurant, spa amenities and organized excursions running from hiking and snorkeling to white water rafting and sunset cruises. Straightforward about what it is, which the segment tends to reward.
The Numbers Behind the Bet
What separates this from a lot of niche property launches is that the announcement leads with research rather than vibes. The figures cited in the launch materials, drawing on the International LGBTQ+ Travel Association (IGLTA), Community Marketing & Insights, and Out Now Global:
$218 billion global LGBTQ+ travel market (2021 baseline), with a projected 15% compound annual growth rate through 2030
$100+ billion in annual U.S. LGBTQ+ travel spending alone
$814 billion wellness tourism market in 2022, projected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2027
Over 80% of LGBTQ+ travelers prioritize a destination’s LGBTQ+-friendliness
72% research legal protections before booking
76% of global travelers intend to travel more sustainably
Worth flagging as an editorial note: the $218 billion figure is a 2021 baseline carried forward with a growth projection, not a fresh 2026 measurement. That’s normal in this space — the LGBTQ+ travel market simply isn’t measured annually the way general travel is — but if you’re citing it in a pitch deck, cite it the way it was built.
That last pair of statistics is the one hospitality marketers should sit with. Over 80% screening destinations for friendliness and 72% researching legal protections before booking means the buying decision starts well before the property page. A traveler is evaluating the country, then the region, then the property — in that order. Which is exactly why site selection is a marketing decision, not just a real estate one.
Why Costa Rica, and Why It’s Not Incidental
The site selection rationale is the most transferable part of this launch. Costa Rica was the first Central American nation to legalize same-sex marriage, in May 2020. It generates more than 99% of its electricity from renewables. It has direct flights from major U.S. cities and an established gay hospitality infrastructure in Manuel Antonio, which has been Central America’s most gay-welcoming destination for a long while now.
Read that list again through the lens of the traveler research above: legal protections, sustainability, accessibility, existing community infrastructure. The brand didn’t pick a beautiful beach and then write the values copy afterward. It picked a jurisdiction whose actual policy record answers the questions its guests were already asking.
That’s the pattern we’d point destinations and developers toward. When 72% of your prospective guests are researching legal protections before they book, “where” becomes a brand attribute. You cannot market your way out of a destination that fails the screening.
The Bigger Signal: Somebody Is Building
Here’s why we think this is worth an article rather than a link in a roundup.
The dominant story in LGBTQ+ marketing over the past two years has been subtraction. Brands trimming June budgets, softening logos, sponsorships quietly not renewed. In that climate, a net-new hospitality brand launching with an explicitly gay male core market — and going to the hospitality trade press to say so, in plain language, under an owner’s name — runs directly against the current.
It’s also a reminder of a structural point that gets lost in the retreat narrative: for a company like this, the LGBTQ+ community isn’t a segment of the market. It’s the entire market. There’s no general-audience campaign to fall back on and no reason to hedge. Brands built this way don’t get nervous in the same way, because there’s nothing to get nervous about — the audience they’d be protecting themselves from is the audience they exist to serve.
We’ve spent a lot of time recently covering the institutional side of that same story — Paris standing up a permanent LGBTQ+ tourism committee, GNETWORK360 in Buenos Aires posting 713 business meetings, destinations across Latin America and Europe organizing rather than retreating. Royal Grand Resorts is the private-sector version of the same signal. Capital is still being deployed against this audience. It’s just not always being deployed by the household names.
Where Pink Media Lands on This
A first-launch brand has a specific problem, and it’s one we see constantly on the travel side. It has a property, a story to tell and a defined audience — and no owned channels. No email list of past guests. No search authority. No years of accumulated social following. The assets that make marketing efficient at year five simply don’t exist at year one.
What a launch brand has instead is a window: a legitimate news peg, a differentiated position, and a market that’s actively looking for exactly what it’s offering. The work in that window is borrowed reach — getting the story in front of LGBTQ+ travelers through the channels and communities that already have their attention, while the owned channels get built underneath.
Travel and tourism has been core to our practice since 1995, and this is the moment in a brand’s life where LGBTQ+ media does the most good. If you’re launching something into this market — a property, a destination campaign, a travel product — and thinking about how to reach the audience before you’ve built your own, that’s a conversation we’d welcome. You can always reach us through PinkMedia.LGBT.
Authentic LGBTQ+ engagement, 24/7, 365 days a year — that’s what Pink Media is built for.
