It happens at the hotel check-in desk: the booking for one bed, the receptionist's glance, and the split-second decision of whether to say "partner" or "friend". Last month, research from Booking.com finally put a number on it. Just 34 per cent of British LGBTQ+ travellers say they're out when they travel, despite 76 per cent of us being out to our close friends. Somewhere between the departure board and the check-in desk, more than half of us quietly fold a part of ourselves up and tuck it into the overhead locker for the duration of our stay.
I understand it completely, because I've done it myself. Every queer traveller knows the dial, and my day job as a travel presenter and journalist means I've turned mine up more than most. The first few times I found myself in the Middle East for work, the discomfort caught me off guard. Here in the UK, for all our challenges, I can exist as a gay man. Yet there I was, slipping the pride flag wristband off my hand before landing while checking my screensaver wasn't a photo of me and my boyfriend at the time. You feel it in small moments, like the taxi driver's eyes lingering in the wing mirror a beat too long. The worst of it, however, comes at the hotel desk. I remember the bead of sweat running down my back as it dawned on me that the booking said one double bed, there were two of us, and we’re both men. The clerk repeated "we have single rooms available, sir" and I could barely take it in, because somewhere in the back of my mind, the police were already on their way, and in a country where the way you love carries a prison sentence, that thought is not just paranoia.
