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Earlier I described how the tourism industry handles an enormous volume of money, and that LGBT people provide a more than proportionate share of it. That is why attention has been paid to this target group for decades, including by ‘destinations’.

In addition to airlines, hotels and local businesses, the government also plays a role in these marketing activities. Not only does this bring in money through tourist tax and visitor expenditure – thus benefiting the local economy – but you also have to be able to accommodate all those guests and try not to disrupt normal civilian life.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam has suffered a lot from the latter in recent years. A small, compact city with enormous appeal and a justified top reputation. The DMO (Destination Marketing Organization) is officially called amsterdam&partners, founded in 2013 as Amsterdam Marketing. This organization emerged from a merger of Amsterdam Uitburo, Amsterdam Partners and Amsterdam Tourism & Congress Bureau. In March 2019 they continued under the name amsterdam&partners, but they are better known as I amsterdam. For a long time they had to make an effort to attract more tourists, especially the rainbow tourists (The ideal Traveller) – who after all spend 40% more and often travel outside the high season.

In 2022, Amsterdam had an estimated 13 million day visitors and 7.4 million overnight visitors over a spacious 200 km2 (but most visitors of course mainly come to the compact UNESCO city center). For comparison: New Amsterdam (OK, New York) has 58.3 million per year, but that city is 10 times as large in terms of population, London has 30 million visitors per year with a population of 10x Amsterdam and an area of 1,500 km2.

The first campaign (in the world?)

Until the 1990s, the city’s DMOs promoted their destination as ‘free’ and gay-friendly. The crowning achievement was the unveiling of the world’s first Gay Monument in 1987, in commemoration of the LGBT victims of the Second World War. Experts emphasize the importance of the monument as a symbolic place of pilgrimage for many LGBT tourists, as a place of freedom, safety, peace and remembrance – including for those who have died of AIDS.

But there was no real Marketing the Rainbow until 1992, when the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions (NBTC) was one of the first DMOs in the world to focus on the rainbow market. Mulryan/Nash, a New York-based gay marketing and advertising agency, created a six-week print campaign that appeared in eleven major U.S. cities. This was co-sponsored by Martinair and Eurodollar Rent-A-Car. The text of one advertisement read: ‘Wide smile. Sincere greetings. From people who respect your choices. And who are especially happy that you have chosen to visit them.’ The 1992 campaign was criticized by the city’s ‘mainstream tour operators’, who feared alienation of heterosexual tourists.

A subsequent promotion in 1994 was called ‘Amsterdam, City on the Water’, and was no longer focused on the city’s sexuality. Around the turn of the millennium, the cycle was reversed again and gay male couples were once again used to promote Amsterdam.

Due to a social debate about the image of Amsterdam abroad, activities to promote the gay-friendly character of the city shifted to private institutions, such as entrepreneurs. Abandoning the theme of Amsterdam as a free city for LGBT people has shown that even in the so-called gay mecca Amsterdam, there are limits to the extent of which government agencies can go in supporting ‘pink capital’. When I spoke to ‘I Amsterdam’ about 10 years ago to make them suggestions for Marketing the Rainbow, they almost literally said: ‘Why should we bother, the tourists will come anyway, including the gays. We are now focusing on, for example, Indonesian billionaires.’ <sic>

Amsterdam: Gay Capital no more…

After years of undisputed rule, the Gay Capital label appears to no longer be attached to Amsterdam (see my article from last week). After organizing the extremely successful Gay Games in 1998 (not so much financially, but socially) – with a record number of participants and visitors – and after the introduction of ‘gay marriage’ in 2001 as the first country in the world, the subject disappeared more or less from the agenda.

Amsterdam&partners is one of the sponsors of Pride (functional, because they distribute the subsidies), but does not pay special attention to LGBT visitors. ‘We want to promote Amsterdam as a creative capital and gays are important for that. But our goal is to have more creative companies establish themselves in the city, not to turn it into a gay capital,’ said director Charles van Renesse a few years ago.

Currently the city is so overrun with tourists that marketing efforts are now focusing on crowd control by spreading visitors over the year, and across the city and region. Strangely enough, no attention is once again paid to gay visitors (m/f), although they often visit outside the high season, stay longer and spend more per day. Oh wait, amsterdam&partners does offer a Walking Route through LGBTIQ+ history on their website, which ends with a drink in Café ‘t Mandje, the first gay bar in Amsterdam (and perhaps the first in the world), which opened in 1927. The English version of the site also contains an overview of ‘LGBTQI+ neighborhoods of Amsterdam’ – I could not find that in any of the other 6 languages.

Alphabet soup

The fact that the city also has difficulty with the alphabet soup is evident from the multitude of abbreviations and styles they use for the community (sometimes on the same page): LGBTQI+, LHBTIQ+, lgbtiq+, LGBTI, gay and lhbtiq+, Gay – well, the community creates this confusion itself, so the city just joins in. Toronto Pride was called LGBTTIQQ2SA for years, so it could be even crazier.

I AMSTERDAM

In 2004, the city hired the prestigious advertising agency KesselsKramer (KK) to build their reputation as a desired destination for all. ‘I amsterdam’ started as the marketing campaign for the Amsterdam region and its business and promotional organizations, but quickly took on a life of its own and became a collective slogan for the city’s residents.

KK: ‘Most city campaigns draw attention to buildings, history or other cultural highlights. However, the municipality of Amsterdam wanted a different approach. ‘I Amsterdam’ was the result: a city identity campaign that put the people of Amsterdam in the spotlight in all their diversity. The campaign included a gigantic three-dimensional version of the logo on the renowned Museumplein.

The campaign really took off after the letters proved to be such a tourist magnet and success on social media. The original plywood copies were to be reproduced into a more permanent 2 by 23.5 meter version, multiple copies were made, including a ‘traveling’ version, and tourists were encouraged to add to the hype they had created themselves.

Because the slogan became a symbol for the city, the letters were also used at rainbow events, such as Pride.

Please note: the creation of such a ‘merged’ slogan in the city’s name was not original, LONDON had already done that in 1998. And then of course there were Je suis Paris and Ich bin ein Berliner.

Next week: ‘Everyone’s Gay In Amsterdam’.

Alfred Verhoeven is a marketer and is in the final phase of his PhD research Marketing the Rainbow. He previously wrote for ILOVEGAY about Citymarketing: Gay Capital, The Ideal Traveler, Diversity & Language, Playing with Pronouns, Abercrombie & Fitch : The Rise & The Fall, Play the gayme: about SIMS and Candy Crush, Diversity in Toys, LEGO does the rainbow, Barbiemania, Bud Light and the 4 bln dollar woman, Dutch retailer HEMA loves everybody, Pronouns, About those rainbows, Alphabet soup, M&M’s and the lesbian invasion, Magnum and the lesbian wedding, Marketing the Rainbow: the process and all that came before it, Sport and (un)sportmanship,  Why you need a supplier diversity program, BeNeLux LGBTIQ+ Business Chamber (BGLBC), From B2C and B2B to B2G and G2G (oh, and G2C), The Men from Atlantis, The other kind of cruising, Booking.com, Home Deco, Haters and trolls: the ‘letter to the editor’ of the 21st century, 5 Bizarre LGBT Videos, TRANSparency, Transgender persons as a target group, Matchmaking, 5 videos that went viral, From Representation To Respect, Cultural sensitivities and social involvement in marketing, 4 reasons to practice diversity and The Rules of Market Segmentation.