Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv “

“Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv Pride Tourism in Israel

Amit Kama and Yael Ram

Abstract: The LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning) community is warmly embraced by the city of Tel Aviv. This phenomenon is exemplified by the fact that the Tel Aviv City Hall has been taking a leading part in the organization, financing, and promotion of Pride parades and events in recent years. The present article analyzes a quantitative survey of overseas participants in the 2016 Pride events in Tel Aviv. It explores the motivations, attitudes, satisfaction, and behaviors of tourists, both LGBTQ+ and non- LGBTQ+. The results show that Tel Aviv is perceived as gay friendly by all participants, regardless of their affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community. We discuss the advantages of being a gay-friendly city via high visibility and social inclusion. Finally, we address ‘pinkwashing’, an umbrella term employed to describe the efforts by Israeli authorities to promote a positive image of Israel despite its questioned geopolitical reputation.

Keywords: LGBTQ+, pinkwashing, Pride Parade, Tel Aviv, tourism

Israel is routinely covered by international media in the context of war, terror, and bloodshed. Its image is embedded in and framed by the Israeli- Palestinian conflict (Philo and Berry 2011). Notwithstanding this well- known phenomenon, recent years have seen a dramatic burgeoning of international media attention focused on Israeli LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning) political achievements and trials and tribulations. Furthermore, the international LGBTQ+ public sphere has recently been inundated with stories that depict Israel, and Tel Aviv in particular, as a haven for LGBTQ+, especially gay men. For instance, in a worldwide survey conducted in 2011 by GayCities (2012),1 Tel Aviv was named “Best City.” This article’s objective is to understand

Israel Studies Review, Volume 35, Issue 1, Spring 2020: 79–99 © Association for Israel Studies doi:10.3167/isr.2020.350106 • ISSN 2159-0370 (Print) • ISSN 2159-0389 (Online) 80 | Amit Kama and Yael Ram how this bifurcation affects tourists, both LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+, who visit Tel Aviv during Pride Parades. It also examines how Tel Aviv and Israel benefit from these events. The article is organized as follows. First, a literature review presents various themes regarding LGBTQ+ tourism in general and specifically in Israel, where geohistorical circumstances encompass questions of equality, human rights, and an ongoing geopolitical conflict. The conceptualization of ‘pinkwashing’—marketing strategies promoted by Israeli authorities to enhance the positive image of the state by portraying it as a haven for the LGBTQ+ community while deflating issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—is elaborated and will be questioned in light of the findings. Then four research hypotheses are discussed. The first two focus on the implications of the Pride Parade for Tel Aviv and Israel, while the last two concentrate on the behaviors and preferences of LGBTQ+ tourists. The next sections describe the quantitative research method and explain the findings. The theoretical and practical contributions of the results are discussed in the last section of the article.

LGBTQ+ Tourism

Recent decades have witnessed a growing academic interest in LGBTQ+ individuals and communities. Various disciplines have been inundated with a vast empirical and theoretical literature that delves into a large array of aspects pertaining to LGBTQ+ identity, social relations, politics, representations, and so on. The emerging academic interest in LGBTQ+ tourism is quite new in this rich field, but it mostly focuses on gay men (Vorobjovas-Pinta and Hardy 2016). It can be traced to the publication of the first academic article (Holcomb and Luongo 1996) and the first book on this subject (Clift et al. 2002). The present study, which, as far as we know, is the first of its kind to be carried out in Israel, may help determine whether this country’s singularities have any bearing on the experience of tourists from abroad and their subjective assessment of their visit. LGBTQ+ tourism is, inter alia, the result of lifelong experiences of being disenfranchised, discriminated against, and the target of heterosexist practices (the wide-ranging array of formal, legal, and governmental practices that discriminate against and exclude LGBTQ+) and of homophobia (cog- nitive and affective attitudes and behaviors exhibited by individuals or social groups against LGBTQ+) (Sears 1997). LGBTQ+ tourism differs from non-LGBTQ+ tourism as it constitutes an outlet to relieve and alleviate minority stress that has developed from prejudice, rejection, hiding one’s sexual orientation, and discrimination (Meyer 2003), all of which create “Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv | 81 a hostile and stressful environment that is suffered by many LGBTQ+ individuals on a quotidian basis. It presents an opportunity to escape into friendly circumstances where LGBTQ+ are welcome and homophobic hostilities or threats are minimized, and where they can behave freely and independently of oppressive societal sanctions felt at home. LGBTQ+ holidays also provide a way to construct and validate individual and collective identities (Hughes 2002). Indeed, “gay travel motivations usually arise from the opportunity to feel free and a possibility to articulate ‘gayness’ in a non-judgmental space … and a sense of belonging to a particular community” (Vorobjovas-Pinta and Hardy 2016: 412). Consequently, most LGBTQ+ tourists prefer destinations celebrated as friendly—with spatial concentrations of venues, accommodations, and events that cater to LGBTQ+—where socializing with predominantly or exclusively other LGBTQ+ is easy and safe. Host cultures, cities, and/or states that are not perceived as threatening (Hughes and Deutsch 2010) thus become popular sites whose reputations are consolidated via word of mouth and the tourism industry catering to LGBTQ+. Pride parades have recently been utilized by various cities around the globe to attract LGBTQ+ tourists with two main objectives in mind. First, for the LGBTQ+ person, participation “provides opportunities … to reaf- firm his particular sexual identity, his membership in an imagined community, and to actively contribute to the production of a cultural form” (Waitt and Markwell 2006: 218). These carnivalesque rites of passage, despite being “magnets for commercialisation” (Kates and Belk 2001: 392), result in the “social legitimisation of gay and lesbian community” (ibid.: 415). For the organizing authority (usually a city hall), such events constitute a source of income, and they are considered to be economically lucrative venues. Official sponsorship and endorsement of Pride events result from the acknowledgment that these events not only attract large numbers of tourists who spend money during their visit, but can also lead to further visits. Alexandra Chasin (2001) laments the ‘selling out’ of the gay and lesbian movement for equality and civil rights and the rise of consumeristic culture that infuses this community. She notes that the political concept of Pride has been commodified and turned into a consumeristic apparatus. Lisa Duggan (2002) calls this rather new phenomenon ‘homonormativity’—that is, a politics that challenges neither heteronormative assump- tions nor neo-liberal capitalism. Homonormative LGBTQ+ pursue and aspire for assimilation within the social and political order without chal- lenging the status quo. In the same vein, and despite her blatant critique of the commodification and commercialization aspects of the parades along- side her uneasiness with the homonormalization and policing of the queer body and community, Lynda Johnston (2005: 77) elaborates on the various 82 | Amit Kama and Yael Ram

benefits cities accrue thanks to these events: “The site of pride parades do not just use cities as their spatial back drop, rather, cities derive their tourist meaning from the queer bodies that parade in them.” It is thus not surprising to learn that InterPride (2016–2017), the International Associa- tion of Pride organizers, has identified 971 Pride events worldwide.

Pride Parades in Tel Aviv

Pride events—in particular the annual parade commemorating the Stone- wall riots of 1969 and celebrating LGBTQ+’s demand for full social, cultural, and legal inclusion—provide opportunities for LGBTQ+ people to assert their social and individual identities and help consolidate a sense of community, especially in a world that tends to shun and shame them. The first LGBTQ+ public event in Israel took place in Tel Aviv in 1993: it was attended by a few dozen LGBTQ+ and attracted as many curious bystand- ers.This humble event was organized and financed by the Society for the Protection of Personal Rights, an LGBTQ+ Israeli organization. After sev- eral years of repeated requests by the Society, the Tel Aviv municipality agreed to assist and has gradually become the sole producer of the annual parade (Kama 2011).2 As of 2007, the Tel Aviv City Hall has been involved in all aspects of the organization, financing, and promotion of the parade. These efforts include appointing an LGBTQ+ city councilor to be in charge, authorizing alloca- tions from the city budget, promoting the event overseas, and the like. Tel Aviv actually begins to celebrate Pride weeks in advance when the city’s main arteries are already clad with rainbow flags, the international symbol of the LGBTQ+ community. This municipal co-optation of the Pride events magnifies a rather unusual situation in which the LGBTQ+ community is embraced by a local government. The most conspicuous symbol for this phenomenon (probably unique in the world) is the Tel Aviv Munici- pal LGBT Community Center, which opened in June 2008. Administered and funded by the city, the center, whose director and managers are city employees, hosts some 30 organizations that operate under its umbrella (Misgav 2015). 4This center symbolizes, maintains, and reproduces the LGBTQ+ community’s growing socio-political power while exhibiting its embrace by the local authorities (Hartal and Sasson-Levy 2016). Generally speaking, the Israeli LGBTQ+ community has adopted strategies of immersion within the general population (e.g., the struggle to lift the military ban on LGBTQ+ soldiers that was victorious in 1996), and Tel Aviv City Hall has welcomed these endeavors by founding and funding an emergency home for LGBTQ+ adolescents, the prominent community “Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv | 83 center, and other similar initiatives (Kama 2011). Consequently, it can be argued that unlike other cities and governmental agencies that promote LGBTQ+ tourism but do not necessarily exhibit gay-friendly policies (Waitt and Markwell 2006), the Tel Aviv municipal agencies are particularly friendly to the LGBTQ+ community. Due to brevity constraints, this article cannot delve into the complex circumstances of life in Tel Aviv (Misgav 2015), yet a terrorist attack on the LGBTQ+ youth center in 2009, when two young people were murdered, is worth mentioning. This incident, albeit homophobic and violent, is sin- gular and should not shadow the overall atmosphere of the city. Gilly Hartal (2019: 1154) corroborates: “Tel-Aviv promotes its LGBT presence and inclusivity, indirectly bolstering modern-liberal narratives of progress to improve its international image as a place of tolerance that encourages diversity while promoting its economic interests. Tel Aviv is thought of as the place for LGBT individuals, a space of belonging … a ‘bubble’, the opposite of all other space in Israel” (original emphasis). Journalistic reports estimate that 200,000 people attended the 2016 Tel Aviv Pride Parade, of whom 30,000 were tourists. Regardless of the actual number, non-LGBTQ+ people constitute a considerable portion of the revelers—a fact that adds further weight to the rather successful trajectory of the mainstreaming of the LGBTQ+ community. However, one should not be led astray by the Tel Aviv context. Pride parades in other cities and towns around the country have been encountering severe homophobic reactions ranging from uncooperative city halls to violence on the streets. The most dramatic instance was the murder of a girl in the Jerusalem parade in 2015. Another case was the police ban on a parade in the south- ern town of Be’ersheva in 2016. On the other hand, for example, in July 2016 the Israel Defense Forces issued a decree allowing soldiers to participate in Pride Parades as long as they do not wear their uniforms. The Israeli context is full of surprises and paradoxes. Thus, it should be emphasized that the present study focuses on Tel Aviv and should not be construed as representative of the entire state, where anti-LGBTQ+ senti- ments, grounded largely on religious pretexts, have had severe ramifica- tions on the feasibility of the parades and the well-being of their attendees. Even when parades do take place, they may encounter hostile, aggressive, and violent opposition. Interestingly, the Tel Aviv parades have been encountering opposition within the LGBTQ+ community itself. Various queer groups and scholars have been adamant regarding the pinkwashing character and nature of the homonormative and homonational aspects of these events, as well as the general trajectory of civil immersion. Hartal (2019: 1150), for example, opines that Pride events—once mobilized to enable a queer oppositional 84 | Amit Kama and Yael Ram

culture—have become mechanisms that construct LGBTQ+ individuals and communities as “valued products.” This homonormative and neo- liberal business model, which relies on LGBTQ+ tourism and its profits to create economic power for the LGBTQ+ community and wealth for the Tel Aviv municipality, does not translate into political gains, change, or even symbolic power for the community. LGBTQ+ radical groups and individuals contest the mainstreaming and assimilationist trajectory by which (mostly affluent and urban) gay men adopt heteronormative—and, by definition, patriarchal and national—values and norms, especially by establishing heteronormative families. Finally, opposition within the community also targets the carnivalesque character of the parade and its com- modifying and consumeristic qualities. Queer scholars and activists criticize Israel’s official foreign policy, championed by the prime minister and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, claiming that it portrays Israel as an LGBTQ+ haven in order to divert attention from the Occupation and the Palestinians’ abject situation (Gross 2015). Sarah Schulman (2012) conceptualizes pinkwashing as an umbrella term to describe the concerted efforts by Israeli governmental authorities to promote the positive image of the State of Israel by portraying it as a haven for the LGBTQ+ community. Ironically, the state, which has been unwilling to promote LGBTQ+ rights of its own accord, now flaunts LGBTQ+ victories overseas. Pink- washing serves also as a propaganda apparatus in order to camouflage the Occupation and the problematics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike the LGBTQ+ circumstances (i.e., legal status) in other countries, the situation in Israel is rather unique because LGBTQ+ rights and status are enmeshed within the geopolitical atmosphere of the country, which is predominantly characterized by the ongoing conflict with its neighbors and by the influence that religion and religious institutions have in Israel’s political arena and on its citizens’ life (Gross 2015; Kama 2000). The 2016 Pride Parade was titled “Women for a Change” in light of the highly visible pervasiveness of gay men in official roles in the city hall as well as in LGBTQ+ organizations. For many years lesbians have considered themselves to be excluded and even symbolically annihilated. How- ever, their actual presence and effectiveness in the events themselves may be questionable (to be demonstrated later on), as well as their ‘marketable’ attractiveness manifested, for example, in the official sites aimed at overseas tourists. For example, the Gay TLV Guide (2016) boasts: “With a gay scene that competes with all gay capitals around the globe … Tel Aviv is definitely a place you should check out for your next trip … A few reasons why you should come: HOT GUYS. Magnificent gay beach. Shop till you drop. No gay area because the WHOLE CITY is GAY” (emphases in the “Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv | 85 original). The last statement corroborates the absence of a ‘gay ghetto’, similar to other major cities in the West—a fact grounded in the sense of relative safety for LGBTQ+ in Tel Aviv. In recent years, the city hall coordinators of the parade, in collaboration with various LGBTQ+ groups, have been organizing many Pride-related events that last an entire week. In 2016, the official city hall website enu- merated various events (aside from the parade itself) that took place from 29 May to 5 June (see Pride Parade Tel Aviv 2016). Among them were 37 parties, 8 sports activities, 3 theatrical performances, and daily tours to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Such an abundant and diverse array of activities supports the investment by the city hall in events that are not necessarily profit-oriented and indirectly accentuate its LGBTQ+ friendliness. Another official site, Visit Tel Aviv (2016), declares the following: “Israe- lis take great Pride in Tel Aviv and so does the international community! Here are FIVE POINTS OF PRIDE that make the Middle Eastern city … the world’s top gay city!” The city hall allocates large sums of money and labor in order to produce Pride events and to promote them around the globe in a fashion similar to other cities in the world. The Pride Parade is marketed overseas not only by the Tel Aviv authorities, but also by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, which allocated some NIS 11 million (approximately $3.5 million) for its promotion in 2016 (Hartal 2019). Jasbir Puar (2002) and others tend to be quite critical of national and municipal tourism organizations that target and consequently conceptualize young, sin- gle, affluent gay men. Based on this complicated background, four hypotheses have been formulated. The first focuses on the positive appreciation of Tel Aviv as an LGBTQ+-friendly city.

H1: The positive appreciation of Tel Aviv by LGBTQ+ tourists will be mediated by its perception as a gay-friendly city.

The positive coverage of Israel’s LGBTQ+ community and the attention that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been receiving for decades have together created a contested and bifurcated image: Israel is simultaneously a safe place for LGBTQ+ and yet potentially unsafe and danger- ous for everyone. The focus of the present study has evolved in order to tackle questions about the popularity of the Tel Aviv Pride events among tourists, thousands of whom attend them. For example, Wikipe- dia claims that “the parade is the biggest Pride celebration in continental Asia, drawing more than 200,000 people in 2017, approximately 30,000 of them tourists.”3 It is thus of interest to examine whether the tension between Tel Aviv as a safe and attractive place for LGBTQ+ tourists and 86 | Amit Kama and Yael Ram the region’s reputation for violence in fact allows Tel Aviv to be regarded as a tourist enclave. The second hypothesis therefore focuses on Tel Aviv as an LGBTQ+ tourist enclave in Israel.

H2: LGBTQ+ tourists will tend to stay in Tel Aviv and not travel to other sites in Israel, compared with tourists who are motivated by sightseeing or religious interests.

Gordon Waitt, Kevin Markwell, and Andrew Gorman-Murray (2008) review the scarce analyses of LGBTQ+ identities in tourism studies. They cite some works that focus primarily on textual analyses of LGBTQ+-targeted marketing campaigns by various authorities and a few that examine the “pink travel economy” (ibid.: 781). A literature review offers a somewhat different finding. Vorobjovas-Pinta and Hardy (2016: 414) posit that “much of the research has focused on the demographic, behavioral and motivational explorations of wealthier middle-class gay men without children living in urban areas.” In other words, the majority of research has looked into the motivations of gay tourists, which are summarized to have three aspects: social life and sex, culture and sights, and comfort and relaxation (Clift and Forrest 1999). It seems that an empirical lacuna stands out as even fewer studies have actually looked into the LGBTQ+ tourists’ lived experiences from their own perspective (Howe 2001; Poria 2006). The current study thus tries to address this lacuna by attempting to demarcate the socio-demographic attributes of this group, and then see if these factors contribute to their behavior as tourists who attend a specific LGBTQ+ event. In other words, this article aims to examine the characteristics of tourists—be they LGBTQ+ or not—during Pride week in Tel Aviv, a topic that, to the best of our knowledge, has not been explored before. Two hypotheses were formulated to analyze the characteristics of tourists attending the Pride events by focusing on LGBTQ+ patterns of behaviors and testing their adoption by LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ tourists. Online dating sites for LGBTQ+ are abundant and enjoy huge popularity. For instance, the Israeli site ATRAF claims to have dozens of thousands of local and overseas members. GAYDAR advertises itself by proclaiming “thousands of new guys every week.” LGBTQ+ tourists are known to use these sites in order to meet local romantic partners and friends prior to their visits to another country. This phenomenon is tested in the following hypotheses.

H3: Tourists motivated by LGBTQ+ tourism purposes will tend to use online dating sites before their visit, to stay less in hotels (compared “Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv | 87

with other accommodations), and to participate in the events of Pride week compared to non-LGBTQ+ tourists.

H4: Pink economy: LGBTQ+ tourists (associated with the LGBTQ+ community, using online dating sites, and participating in Pride events) are predictors of the average expenditure per day (in US dollars) of tourists coming to Pride week.

Method

Survey

The first part of the questionnaire addresses the current visit (expenditures, number of nights, accommodations, and sites visited). The second part of the questionnaire includes Likert-type scales (1–7) of trip motivations (leisure purposes, LGBTQ+ tourism) and evaluation of Tel Aviv as a tourist destination (safe, LGBTQ+-friendly, overall satisfaction). The third part of the questionnaire focuses on socio-demographic information (age, country of residence). The gender question includes four options: woman, man, transgender, and “prefer not to mention.” Sampling LGBTQ+ individuals is a minefield on both methodological and political grounds. Researchers grapple with the inherent problem- atic of asking respondents to straightforwardly acknowledge their homosexuality. Moreover, the fact that they are willing to take part in surveys demarcates them as non-representative of the entire LGBTQ+ population. Many studies rely therefore on what may be termed ‘the tip of the iceberg’. LGBTQ+ who do take part in studies are more educated, affluent, and/or urban than what can be expected of this group.4 LGBTQ+ samples constitute but the tip of the metaphoric iceberg, whose main body remains undisclosed. Many LGBTQ+ are unwilling to partake in such studies since they are wary of providing information about their sexual orientation and are hence unreachable (Weeden et al. 2016). Conducted during Tel Aviv’s Pride week in 2016, the present survey offers a solution that, in spite of its obvious shortcomings, may help distin- guish between roughly two groups of respondents: those whose affiliation and identification with the LGBTQ+ community implies their homosexual orientation and identity, and those who do not affiliate themselves with this group. The sexual orientation variable was hence measured on a scale ranging from “do not feel part of the LGBTQ+ community” (1) to “feel part of the LGBTQ+ community” (7). Additional items consider the religious affiliation of the participant and the level of religiosity, ranging from 88 | Amit Kama and Yael Ram

“not at all” (1) to “strong” (7). The final part of the survey includes questions about Tel Aviv as a tourist destination.

Procedure

Representatives of the Tourism Department of the Tel Aviv municipality distributed the questionnaire during Pride week (29 May–3 June) to tourists at various times and places in Tel Aviv: at the Tourism Information Center; at the LGBTQ+ beach, a stretch of the Tel Aviv beach (aka the Hilton beach), which is the focal congregation site for LGBTQ+ Israelis and tourists during the summer (Kama 2014); at the starting point of the Pride Parade; and in the open public party on the beach. One hundred sixty-seven questionnaires were completed. Although this sample size is relatively small, it is comparable to the scant number of previous LGBTQ+ tourism on-site quantitative surveys: 188 (Berezan et al. 2015) and 171 (Weeden et al. 2016). The questionnaires were analyzed by IBM SPSS ver- sion 22 and SmartPLS 3.0 (Ringle et al. 2015).

Sample

First, unlike other surveys that study LGBTQ+ tourism (such as those cited above), the current sampling procedure was meant to include tourists of various sexual orientations. The goal was to see if and how LGBTQ+ tourists differ from or are similar to non-LGBTQ+ ones. About three-quarters of the participants (n=167) were men (73 percent), while women constituted a minority (22 percent). Nine participants preferred not to report their gender. No transgender persons partook in the survey since either they were not present at the sites of the questionnaire distri- bution or they chose not to partake in the study. Only 8 women identified with the LGBTQ+ community compared to 87 men, suggesting that the marketing strategy “Women for a Change” was in vain. The tourists came from 33 countries, with more than half hailing from just five: US (19 percent), Germany (12 percent), UK (9 percent), Italy (7.2 percent), and France (6 percent). The ages ranged from 20 to 85, with a mean age of 38.8 (SD=12.2). In terms of religious affiliation, the largest segment was Christian (34 percent), followed by people who did not mention their affiliation (23 percent), atheists (20 percent), Jews (16 percent), and Muslims (2 percent). The sample tends to be somewhat secular, with a mean score of 3.01 (SD=2.00) on the religiosity scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (strong religiosity). Half of the participants reported feeling part of the LGBTQ+ community (49.5 percent of participants reported a score equal to or higher than 5, on a scale ranging from 1 to 7), which suggests “Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv | 89 that many of the tourists who participate in the Tel Aviv Pride events are not affiliated with the LGBTQ+ community. More than half of the participants (59 percent) reported being return visitors to Tel Aviv. Only one-quarter of the participants stayed at hotels, while the majority (53 percent) stayed at rental apartments (such as Airbnb); others stayed with friends or family (10 percent), at hostels (6 percent), and at other sorts of accommodation (6 percent). The participants remained in Tel Aviv for 6.6 nights on average (SD=5.54), but traveled to other places as well, with an average of 2.4 additional sites per tourist (SD=1.4): 7.2 percent of them also visited the Palestine Authority and Jordan. The average group size was 3.15 tourists per group (SD=5.35). Finally, the average spending per tourist per day was $274.60 (SD=510.4). These figures show a highly skewed expenditure curve that, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, is significantly higher than the average expenditure of $174 per tourist per day (Ministry of Tourism 2015).

Results

The participants in the survey reported being motivated mainly by leisure (M=6.08, SD=1.562), sightseeing (M=5.16, SD=1.782), and LGBTQ+ tourism purposes (M=5.05, SD=2.423). Business or visiting friends and relatives was found to be relatively less important (mean scores below 4.0). The participants gave Tel Aviv high scores for being an LGBTQ+-friendly destination (M=6.40, SD=1.051) and a safe place (M=6.16, SD=1.032). Con- sequently, Tel Aviv scored very high in satisfaction (M=6.51, SD=.769) and in recommendation intentions (M=6.52, SD=.852). When addressing other places in Israel, Jerusalem was found to be the most popular site: 78.4 percent of participants reported visiting the city. Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics.

Positive Appreciation of Tel Aviv as an LGBTQ+ City

First, ‘LGBTQ+ tourists’ were conceptualized as being people who are both affiliated with the LGBTQ+ community and motivated to visit Tel Aviv for LGBTQ+ tourism purposes. This combination of the two variables may represent better the variability of tourists to the Pride Parade, based not only on their sexual orientation per se. Second, the ‘LGBTQ+ city factor’ was computed by combining the variables of acquiring new friends and perceptions of Tel Aviv as a gay-friendly safe place. Then, positive appreciation—a combination of satisfaction and intention to recommend to others—was evaluated. 90 | Amit Kama and Yael Ram

Table 1: Descriptive statistics of the study’s variables

Standard The Item (scale) N Mean Deviation Leisure purposes (1–7) 160 6.08 1.562 Sightseeing purposes (1–7) 160 5.16 1.782 Visiting friends and relatives (1–7) 156 3.01 2.346 Business purposes (1–7) 150 1.54 1.553 Gay tourism purposes (1–7) 152 5.07 2.423 Safe place (1–7) 161 6.19 1.032 Gay friendly (1–7) 154 6.40 1.051 Recommend to my friends (1–7) 161 6.52 .852 Satisfaction (1–7) 160 6.51 .769 Spending dollars 130 274.611 510.396 Number of visited sites 130 2.41 1.461 Feeling part of the LGBTQ+ community (1–7) 154 4.78 2.410 Religiosity (1–7) 158 3.01 2.002

The Item (categorical) Yes (%) No (%) Return visitor 163 58.9 41.1 Using online dating sites 148 32.4 67.6 Staying in hotels 158 25.9 74.1 Participated in Pride week events 89 86.5 13.5 Visited Jerusalem 134 78.4 21.6

To study the hypothesis, partial least squares (PLS) was employed to perform structural equation models (SEMs) with latent variables. The PLS- SEM technique is a variance-based analysis recommended when there is no strong theoretical knowledge about the model, and when the variables do not meet the multivariate normality conditions (Alexander et al. 2012). As an initial phase, the reliability and the validity of the latent variables were tested (table 2). The composite reliability scores of the latent variables ranged from 0.779 to 0.953, meeting the recommended cutoff of 0.6. Con- vergent validity was assessed using average variance extracted (AVE) and ranged between 0.550 and 0.909, following the 0.5 threshold. The discrimi- nant validity of the indicators was assessed using factor loadings and cross- loadings (table 3), ensuring that each latent variable shared more variance with its own indicators than with other latent variable indicators. To examine the hypothesis, the structural model was tested with Smart- PLS 3. Values of the Q² measures were analyzed by a blindfolding procedure and supported the model’s predictive relevance: the results of the Q2>0 are shown in table 4. The modeled constructs explain 15 percent of the variance in gay city factor (effect size ƒ²= 0.179) and 44 percent of the variance of the positive appreciation factor (effect size ƒ²=0.646). However, “Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv | 91

Table 2: Reliability and validity of the latent variables

Composite Ave. Variance Latent Variable Indicator Loading Mean Extracted (AVE) Gay city factor Gay friendly 0.870 0.779 0.550 Safe place 0.791 New friends 0.519

Gay tourist factor Gay tourism purposes 0.943 0.938 0.884 Belonging to LGBTQ+ 0.937

Positive appreciation Satisfaction 0.954 0.953 0.909 Recommend to others 0.953

Table 3: Discriminate validity

Gay City Factor Gay Tourist Factor Positive Appreciation Gay city factor 0.742 Gay tourist factor 0.389 0.940 Positive appreciation 0.666 0.293 0.954

Table 4: Hypotheses testing by the structural model

Hypotheses t value P Q2

1.1: Gay tourist factor -> Gay city factor 5.141 0.000 0.076 1.2: Gay city factor -> Positive appreciation 9.480 0.000 0.379

the effect size of the gay city factor is moderate, while the effect size of the positive appreciation is considered large and is explained mainly by the perceptions of Tel Aviv as a gay-friendly city by LGBTQ+ tourists. These results support hypothesis 1. For intervening hypothesis 1, a bootstrapping analysis provided the mean value and standard error for each of the path model coefficients. This information permitted a t-test to be performed for the significance of path model relationships. Both hypotheses were found to be significant. The gay tourist factor—a combination of gay tourism purposes and affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community—contributed to the gay city factor (t=5.141. p=0.000). The gay city factor that was constructed from the new friends, safe place, and gay-friendly indicators predicted the positive appreciation factor of satisfaction and intention to recommend (t=9.480, p=0.000). No significant relation was found between the gay tourist factor and positive appreciation. These results indicate that not only LGBTQ+ tourists but 92 | Amit Kama and Yael Ram

also non-LGBTQ+ tourists perceive Tel Aviv as LGBTQ+-friendly and that the gay-friendly factor contributes to a positive appreciation of Tel Aviv by both groups. Table 5 presents the analysis of hypothesis 1.

Table 4: Linear regression model for predicting tourists’ average expenditure (per day)

Non-standardized Standardardized Coefficients Coefficients Standard Signif- B Error Beta t-test icance (Constant) -959.509 261.455 -3.668 .001 Gay tourism purposes 26.317 43.569 .097 .604 .549 LGBTQ+ community -12.435 41.653 -.045 -.299 .767 Number of visited places 193.252 43.192 .468 4.474 .000 0-no hotel; 1-in hotel 540.548 145.790 .401 3.708 .001 0-no; 1- using dating sites 618.542 137.527 .502 4.498 .000 0-no; 1-repeat visit 418.188 141.733 .341 2.951 .005 0-no; 1-participate in gay events 86.566 205.515 .052 .421 .675

Tel Aviv as an LGBTQ+ Tourist Enclave in Israel

Hypothesis 2 predicts that LGBTQ+ tourists will tend to stay in Tel Aviv, compared with non-LGBTQ+ tourists and tourists who are motivated by sightseeing purposes or religious interests. More specifically, for a linear regression with the number of visited places in Israel, a positive coefficient for sightseeing purposes was expected together with two negative significant coefficients for leisure and LGBTQ+ purposes. However, all three coefficients were found as non-significant predictors of the number of visited places. The hypothesis was hence rejected (F(3,116)=2.809, p=0.224). A following independent t-test compared the religiosity level of tourists who visited Jerusalem (n=100) to those of tourists who did not visit the Holy City (n=29). A non-significant t-test (t(127)=-1.337, p=0.184) resulted in rejection of the hypothesis. In sum, both hypotheses regarding the visits to other sites and places were rejected. No links were found between a priori motivations (including LGBTQ+ purposes) or religiosity and the preferences and patterns of visiting places in Israel.

Characteristics of Gay Tourists

Since the majority of participants who identify with the LGBTQ+ community were men, only gay men are referred to here. According to hypothesis 3, tourists motivated by LGBTQ+ tourism purposes tend to use online “Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv | 93 dating sites before their visit, to stay less in hotels (compared to other accommodation options), and to participate in LGBTQ+ events (parties, parade, the gay beach, and film festival). Three consecutive t-tests were conducted to analyze this hypothesis. The results showed that tourists motivated by LGBTQ+ tourism purposes tend to use online dating sites more (t(94.039)=-2.063, p=0.042) and to participate more in LGBTQ+ events (t(86)=-5.263, p=0.000), but no differences were found with regard to pref- erence of accommodation (t(143)=-0.563, p=0.574). Hence, the hypothesis was only partially supported. For testing hypothesis 4 regarding the average expenditure per day of gay tourists, a list of predictors was inserted into a linear regression model. First, supported characteristics of LGBTQ+ tourism were added as predictors of expenditures: gay tourism purposes, affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community, using online dating sites, and participating in LGBTQ+ events. Then, other predictors of expenditures (such as number of visited places, type of accommodation, and first/return visitors) were inserted. According to the hypothesis, all predictors should be significant, as well as the regression model. Nevertheless, the results show that the so-called pink economy assumption is only partially supported. LGBTQ+ tourism purposes, affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community, and participation in LGBTQ+ events were not significant predictors of expenditure. Yet the use of dating sites positively affected the dependent variable. Other predictors produced positive effects. Staying in hotels, visiting places outside Tel Aviv, and being a return tourist contributed to the amount of money spent. The overall significant model (F(7,49)=7.727, p=0.000) explained 53 percent of the variance of the dependent variable (adjusted R² =0.457) as shown in table 5.

Discussion

The critique aimed at LGBTQ+-targeted marketing campaigns for cities around the world usually asserts that such a campaign does not necessarily mean that the self-promoting city is indeed LGBTQ+-friendly (Puar 2002). Waitt and Markwell (2006: 20) claim that “economic imperatives, rather than social justice and acceptance, underpin why public funds … are spent iden- tifying and circulating the distinctive elements of a city’s identity as ‘gay friendly.’” Conversely, the current study shows that Tel Aviv is positively perceived to be an LGBTQ+-friendly city and hence tolerant and embracing. The rainbow flags throughout the main streets of the city, the “Gay Friendly” stickers on many commercial venues’ doors, the LGBTQ+ center in downtown Tel Aviv, and other manifestations of acceptance detailed 94 | Amit Kama and Yael Ram above corroborate the feeling that LGBTQ+ persons are part and parcel of the city’s population. Furthermore, unlike parades that are relegated by some city halls to ‘gay ghettos’ or “queer enclaves” (Johnston 2005: 61), the Tel Aviv parades march along the main avenues of the city and end at public parks or the beach. Tel Aviv Pride Parades, then, are an integral part of the quotidian townscape where paraders and spectators, be they LGBTQ+ or not, are enfolded into one entity, if only for a brief moment. Regardless of the participants’ affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community, they tend to report Tel Aviv as LGBTQ+-friendly and highly appre- ciate it. Hartal’s (2019) critique is acute: she claims that Pride events are used to create economic profit for the city of Tel Aviv while demeaning the political and activist nature of the LGBTQ+ community, thereby constructing it within a narrow neo-liberal logic. We would like to offer a contesting perspective: despite the neo-liberal and capitalist motivations of the city, its LGBTQ+-friendly and embracing policies and actions (3 of the 30 members of Tel Aviv City Hall are gay men and 1 is a lesbian) may prove that it does not assume LGBTQ+ people are mere docile subjects in an economic market. The popularity of the Tel Aviv Pride events among overseas tourists—regardless of their sexual orientation—surely yields monetary profits, but at the same time, it bolsters the strong position of Tel Aviv LGBTQ+ residents. Thus, the year-long LGBTQ+ friendliness strengthens the attractiveness of the city, and this, in turn, is substantiated by profits from tourism that may be invested in LGBTQ+ activities and organizations. This cycle can be conceptualized as a win-win situation, from which overseas tourists, local LGBTQ+ communities, individuals, and the city’s authorities benefit. Consequently, tourists would recommend visiting Tel Aviv to others: happy and satisfied travelers may serve as ambassadors of good will for a place they find welcoming and safe. Urban destinations could gain a competitive advantage by providing an ongoing and stable sense of LGBTQ+ friendliness via high visibility of the LGBTQ+ community and its social inclusion and acceptance, as well as safeguarding its civil rights. In other words, a marketing strategy cannot be based on an image per se, but has to be grounded on a substantial integration of the LGBTQ+ community within a city’s social fabric and its political institutions. Further- more, positioning a city as LGBTQ+-friendly is attractive to non-LGBTQ+ tourists, who value this attribute despite the fact that it does not directly impact their experience. Common wisdom, corroborated by some studies (Guaracino 2007), iden- tifies gay men as a lucrative niche market since they are believed to be a high-income group who lead a leisure-oriented lifestyle and thus spend more money as tourists. Accordingly, many metropolitan and national “Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv | 95 tourism boards and travel agencies, seeking to increase profitability, strive to attract this group. The current study challenges this notion but concurs with Howard Hughes (2005), who doubts such biased and unsubstantiated accounts of the so-called pink economy. Our analysis shows that the average expenditure was not found to be correlated to LGBTQ+ purposes, to affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community, or to participation in LGBTQ+ events. Four variables were found as predictors of high expenditure, three of which are not related to LGBTQ+ tourism: staying in hotels, visiting other sites in Israel, and being a return visitor. These are explained by their very nature. However, the fourth variable, usage of online dating sites prior to the visit, seems to be somewhat odd, because we expected gay tourists who had already made contact with Israeli men prior to their visit would benefit from their hospitality and thus spend less. This finding calls for another study for explanation. In sum, the popular equation ‘gay men=money’ was refuted. In accordance with previous research, and for reasons that are beyond the scope of the present article, LGBTQ+ events in general, and the Tel Aviv Pride events in particular, attract more men than women, or at least women chose not to partake in this survey for some reason. Lesbians’ unwilling- ness to participate in such events is also documented elsewhere (Weeden et al. 2016). Puar (2002) goes further to inquire about the invisibility of lesbian tourism. The marketing efforts by the organizing committee of the 2016 Tel Aviv Pride Parade that aimed to attract lesbians failed, perhaps because lesbians did not feel genuinely welcome. The title “Women for a Change” seemed to be an empty promise since most marketing messages targeted men (“Hot guys”). This conclusion is in line with Chasin’s (2001) assertion that most advertising supposedly aimed at the LGBTQ+ community actually targets only gay men. It also aligns with our aforementioned conclusion that in order to be an attractive tourist destination, a city needs to be LGBTQ+-friendly, not only in (campaign) words, but also in deeds. To be attracted and sense that they are being targeted, women need to feel really welcome, beyond the advertising words themselves. A future study should focus on lesbians’ needs and the means to address them. Israel seems to be constantly covered in the global media in one context, namely, the geopolitical conflict, and it may thus be construed as danger- ous for visitors. However, the majority of the tourists during Pride week in 2016 not only viewed Tel Aviv as a safe and friendly place, but also toured the country. This may be the result of the heavy marketing campaigns by the tourist authorities to promote LGBTQ+ tourism in Tel Aviv and the outcome of the city’s reputation that circulates in global LGBTQ+ media. Whatever their reason for visiting Tel Aviv, and regardless of other variables, tourists did visit other sites in Israel. The official campaigns repeatedly emphasized LGBTQ+ activities (parade, parties, film festival) 96 | Amit Kama and Yael Ram and non-LGBTQ+ activities (shopping) in Tel Aviv itself. Yet the findings indicated that the lion’s share of tourists traveled and visited places outside of the city. Moreover, the majority had come here repeatedly. It can be argued that the strategy by the Israeli authorities does incur some benefits: tourists, be they LGBTQ+ or not, set aside other consider- ations (e.g., political standpoints), and come to enjoy the advantages of Tel Aviv. It is impossible to explicitly conclude from these findings whether the anti-Israel, particularly the anti-pinkwashing, critique that seems to have accelerated in recent years plays any role in the deterrence of poten- tial tourists and impedes their visiting Israel. However, on the basis of the actual experiences of those who did arrive in 2016, it seems that their perceptions were largely positive. Of special interest is that they felt safe during their stay. Finally, the analyses employed here will hopefully benefit future studies that take into consideration both LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ tourists simultaneously. Future discussions could profit from employing a broader perspective by examining spectators and paraders, regardless of their sexual orientation. Furthermore, we feel it is vital that such studies incorporate qualitative interviews, so that the tourists’ voices and their own accounts of lived experiences can be included in the analysis.

Acknowledgments

The survey was implemented and funded by the Tel Aviv City Hall.

AMIT KAMA is a Senior Lecturer at Yezreel Valley Academic College. His research focuses on minority groups—gay men and lesbians, people with disabilities, migrant workers, and immigrants—and the construction of their identities vis-à-vis mediated representations. His works include numerous papers as well as five books. The latest, co-edited with Sigal Barak-Brandes, is Feminist Interrogations of Women’s Head Hair: Crown of Glory and Shame (2018). E-mail: [email protected]

Yael Ram is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Tourism Studies at Ashkelon Academic College. Her research interests focus on person-environment relations. She studies sustainable (and unsustainable) consumer behaviors and mobilities, cultural ecosystem services, responsible tourism, gender issues, and place-driven emotions. She has co-authored Tourism, Public Transport and Sustainable Mobility (2017), and co-edited The Routledge International Handbook of Walking (2017). E-mail: [email protected] “Hot Guys” in Tel Aviv | 97

Notes

1. Wikipedia and other non-academic online sources are cited in order to sub- stantiate the general claim that Tel Aviv is celebrated and frequently men- tioned in popular and widely accessible sites. 2. For additional information about the legal, cultural, and social circumstances and status of LGBTQ+ in Israel, see Kama (2000, 2005, 2014). 3. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Aviv_Pride. 4. For a detailed review on bias in sampling LGBTQ+ in tourism studies, see Hughes (2005).

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