I frequently travel with my partner and we've stayed at a variety of accomodations from wonderful resorts to small gay B&Bs.

I've noticed, though, that I used to stay at more "gay" places that I do now. I think part of that is the convenience of booking -- it is rare that I find a B&B that I can shop rates and availability online. Its a tedious process of calling each in an area, checking availability, negotiating rates, etc vs. a quick trip to expedia, etc, or my new found love for priceline ($60/night for Sheraton Bal Harbour here I come!)

The pluses for staying at a gay B&B are usually that atmosphere is nice and sometimes getting to meet other travelelers can be fun, also perhaps a CO pool in places like Florida or Palm Springs. Another minus is that gay B&Bs are rarely cost competitve (for the given hotel class)

What do other people do?

I agree that "gay" places are often not cost competitive. I usually only stay at "gay" places in resort type areas (eg Palm Springs, Ft Lauderdale, Key West). Otherwise, I tend to stay in mainstream places.

peteropny very nicely summarized my thoughts too. At resort areas, we often go to gay places, even though they tend to be overpriced (the "gay tax").

Like the original poster, I too have discovered the joys of using Priceline for my leisure hotel stays. I wouldn't even think of using PL for an airline ticket, but for a hotel room it offer a lot of value.

We always end up staying in hotels, unless we're really travelling for the sake of a gay destination. (and that hasn't really happened yet!)

That was the big fear about the gay cruises. I'm all for someplace where we can feel totally comfortable, but I can only handle so much totally gay environment. I don't want to feel like I have to be totally ON everywhere I go when I'm on vacation.

Second what robb says. If it is a big city, we go for points (ideally Starwood). If it is gay (KW, Ptown, PS), then we go for a resort/B&B

As an aside, noticed the W Union Square has a fine selection, of er, "training videos". Normally you only have the straight stuff, but they did have a selection of gay and lesbian films (and I don't mean Priscilla: Queen of the Desert http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttravel_forum/wink.gif )

[This message has been edited by LHR Tim (edited 04-25-2002).]

I don't think we've ever stayed in a gay hotel/B&B nor have we ever gone to someplace like ptown. There's just too much to see in the world.

Yees, but sometimes it's nice to be amongst family when travelling.

As well as being more expensive some gay places can take the gustes very much for granted when it comes to quality.

But so can more mainstream properties. Hence we do our homework before booking. In KW, PT, and PS we have our favourites and we book them the next year. The property we stay at in PS (The Hacienda), we've seen the owners change four times. Nonetheless, it has gone from strength to strength.

We almost never stay at hotels or B&Bs that cater specifically to a gay clientele. I can think of only twice: once in Key West and once at the Russian River. Both destinations have a large number of gay visitors, so the choice of accommodations was fairly plentiful. The guesthouses we stayed at were nice and very friendly, but the value for money was not what I expected. This seems to echo the sentiments of some other posters here.

We usually end up picking out the property we stay at simply by location and amenities. In large cities, these tend to be bigger properties rather than smaller ones that might be gay orientated.