While a lot of the industry has spent two years going quiet, Pennsylvania’s tourism office went the other way — launching “Sorry Not Sorry” for LGBTQ+ travelers alongside campaigns for Black and Hispanic visitors, and framing the whole thing as economic growth rather than a values statement. In a genuinely purple state. With the governor’s office behind it. It’s the counter-example to the “everyone is retreating” narrative — and with America’s 250th, the World Cup and the MLB All-Star Game all landing in Philadelphia this year, the timing couldn’t be sharper. We break down what destination marketers should actually borrow from it.
Here’s a headline you may have missed in a year full of retreat stories: a state tourism office in one of the most politically contested states in the country built an LGBTQ+ traveler campaign, gave it a name with some attitude, and put the governor’s office behind it.
Pennsylvania’s Tourism Office, part of the Department of Community & Economic Development, rolled out a set of campaigns aimed at travelers the state wasn’t reaching. Three of them, each built for a different audience:
- “You Do You” — for Black travelers
- “Visita Para” — for Hispanic and Spanish-speaking travelers, with a bilingual double meaning (“visit for”) that works either way you read it
- “Sorry Not Sorry” — for LGBTQ+ travelers
The LGBTQ+ line is the one that got picked up in queer media this Pride season, and you can see why. “Sorry Not Sorry” isn’t a soft welcome mat. It’s a state saying it isn’t going to apologize for who it invites in — and doing it at a moment when the safer play, the one plenty of destinations have chosen, is to say nothing at all.
What Makes This Different From a Rainbow Landing Page
Two things stand out to me.
First, the framing. Pennsylvania didn’t position this as a values statement. It positioned it as revenue. The announcement leads with the numbers: in 2024 the state’s tourism industry generated $83.9 billion in economic impact, supported 514,261 jobs, contributed $5 billion in state and local taxes, and welcomed 201.6 million visitors. Reaching audiences the state hadn’t been speaking to isn’t charity in that framing — it’s how you grow the next chunk of an $83.9 billion industry.
That’s the argument we’ve been making to destination clients for years, and it lands very differently coming from a commonwealth’s economic development agency than it does coming from a marketing firm. When a DMO can point to a state line item and say “this is why,” the campaign survives the budget meeting.
Second, the work behind it. The Tourism Office developed these with Mendoza Group and Miles Partnership, informed by focus group research with people from the communities being targeted. Then Visit PA went and showed up in person — Out Fest, the Latino Ball, OURfest, the 8 Seconds Rodeo. Research first, creative second, presence third. That’s not a press release strategy. That’s a marketing plan.
Deputy Secretary of Tourism Anne Ryan put the thesis plainly: “Pennsylvania is a place where everyone should feel welcome to explore, connect, and create lasting memories.” And, in the coverage that followed: “It is more important than ever that we make sure everyone knows that Pennsylvania is a welcoming place.”
The Counter-Example the Industry Needed
We’ve spent the last two years documenting the other direction. Brands trimming June budgets. Sponsorships quietly not renewed. And on the destination side, the moment that told everyone what time it was: Visit Florida removing its LGBTQ Travel section from the state tourism website without announcement or explanation.
Pennsylvania went the opposite way, in a state that is genuinely purple and where there was a real political cost available for the taking. When Governor Shapiro amplified the campaign during Pride, the replies filled up with exactly what you’d expect. The campaign stayed up.
I’ll say the part that matters to us directly: when businesses and institutions pull back from the LGBTQ+ community, it reads as a reaction that wasn’t thought through, and for us it isn’t abstract — it’s our lives. So when a state government does the harder thing and holds the line in public, that deserves to be named, not skimmed past.
It’s also a useful data point against the narrative that everyone is retreating. They aren’t. The retreat is loud and the commitment is quiet, which makes the commitment easy to miss if you’re only reading the headlines.
Pennsylvania Isn’t Starting From Zero
Here’s the context that makes this more than a one-off campaign: the commonwealth already has real LGBTQ+ tourism infrastructure to plug into, in both of its major markets.
Philadelphia has arguably the deepest institutional history in American LGBTQ+ destination marketing. The city ran television advertising aimed at LGBTQ+ travelers back in 2004, when almost no U.S. destination would touch it — work led by the late Jeff Guaracino, who effectively wrote the playbook the rest of the industry has been borrowing from ever since. Today Visit Philadelphia maintains a full LGBTQ+ section, and the Gayborhood has a dedicated Pride visitor center. That’s twenty-plus years of continuity, not a seasonal microsite.
Pittsburgh runs its own LGBTQIA+ travel hub with things to do, resources and local partners — a smaller market doing the year-round work most cities its size skip entirely.
So a statewide campaign isn’t landing on empty ground. It’s an umbrella over city-level assets that already exist, which is exactly the sequence that works: the state buys the awareness, the cities convert it. Destinations that launch statewide creative with nothing underneath it end up sending interested travelers to a 404.
And the Timing Is Extraordinary
2026 is the biggest visitor year Pennsylvania will see in a generation. America’s 250th anniversary is centered on Philadelphia. The city is a FIFA World Cup 26 host city. The MLB All-Star Game is at Citizens Bank Park. International arrivals, domestic road trips, sports travel and heritage travel all stacking into the same twelve months.
Every one of those audiences contains LGBTQ+ travelers who are asking the same question they ask about every destination right now: am I actually welcome there, or am I just being sold to? A state that has already answered that question in public — before the traveler had to go looking — is competing on a different footing than one that stayed silent and hopes nobody notices.
What Destination Marketers Should Take From This
A few things worth borrowing, whether you’re a state office, a city CVB or a regional bureau:
- Lead with the economic case. Not because the values case is weak, but because the economic case is the one that survives an administration change and a budget cycle.
- Do the research before the creative. Focus groups with the actual community produced “Sorry Not Sorry.” No agency invents that tone in a vacuum.
- Build for more than one audience at once. Three campaigns launched together reads as a coherent growth strategy, not a single group being singled out for special treatment — which is also, practically speaking, harder to pick off.
- Show up in person. Community events aren’t a nice-to-have add-on to the media buy. For LGBTQ+ audiences they are the credibility.
- Then keep it visible the other eleven months. A campaign that only surfaces in June teaches travelers exactly how deep the commitment goes.
Where Pink Media Lands
Travel and tourism has been core to our practice since the beginning, and we track destination behavior closely for the 2026 LGBTQ+ Marketplace Guide. Pennsylvania goes in the column we don’t get to fill often enough: a government entity, in a contested state, choosing visibility and framing it as growth.
It’s also a signal worth reading if you work on the agency or media side. State tourism offices in purple states are still investing here — often without much noise, sometimes precisely because quiet is what keeps the budget intact. The retreat story got all the coverage. The offices that never stopped spending are still spending.
If you’re on the destination side and thinking through what a year-round LGBTQ+ travel presence looks like — the content, the calendar, the ongoing visibility rather than the June push — that’s a conversation we’d welcome. You can reach us through PinkMedia.LGBT.
Authentic LGBTQ+ engagement, 24/7, 365 days a year — that’s what Pink Media is built for.
