Weeqender™ LGBT Travel and Lifestyle Magazine Blog

Because every day should be a Weeqend!™

It’s a big and crazy world out there so better arm yourself with useful info!

Weeqender is your personal guide to LGBTQ travel and lifestyle in the Philippines and the world. From travel and food tips to health and community news, we pool original content and updated info to give you sound choices for gay-friendly travel, leisure and recreation.

Weeqender is the Philippines’ first specialized online publication for LGBTQ travel and lifestyle. Our website content is not only meant for LGBTQs but for our heterosexual friends (or allies as we like to call them) and family members as well. We hope that by exploring Weeqender and reading our articles, they will better understand and accept their brothers, sisters and friends who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer.

Weeqender? What’s with the spelling?

Haha. Yeah, I knew you’d be asking that. WEEQENDER is Weekender spelled with a Q to emphasize the queerness of this magazine blog. Weeqender was made by Maica, a lesbian, for the LGBTQ community. This started as an idea in August 2009. While researching on gay travel, Maica realized the need for and absence of a travel guide for LGBTQs in the Philippines. As a former travel magazine editor, Maica decided to put her experience into good use by starting the country’s first LGBTQ travel and lifestyle magazine, and bring together travel buffs (LGBTQs or otherwise) to mark gay-friendly destinations on the map.

Undeniably, one of the most powerful consumers in the market today are LGBTQs (see Community Marketing Inc.’s research results). Even common sense will tell you that; Without a traditional family to feed, LGBTQs have more spending power and freedom. Think of the yuppies, employees of ad agencies and big corporations. LGBTQs earn and spend on lifestyle choices and that makes them a potential big market. If only non-traditional businesses would realize this, I bet they would be tapping this market at the first chance they get. Enough on that. Simply put, my idea is to have an ultimate resource for LGBTQ travel destinations and lifestyle. I travel a lot and recently I made friends with fellow LGBTQs from other countries. Secretly I wished to bring them where the LGBTQ action is but I didn’t know where to start. I’d like to know where the best LGBTQ romantic destinations are, where LGBTQ couples and friends can eat without fear of being stared at or discriminated.

Discrimination?

Easy now. We know discrimination is a big issue and here at WEEQENDER, we want to keep things light and fun. We just used discrimination as an inspiration to come up with this blog. In our own little way, we are helping fight discrimination by promoting visibility and help establish the power of LGBTQs in society. Yes, LGBTs exist in the Philippines and no amount of wishing will make us go away. There are a number of influential LGBT icons too, and visit WEEQENDER regularly to find out who they are. If you want to join the fight for LGBT’s human rights in the Philippines, check out the list of organizations actively pursuing this cause in the Links section.

Go see the country, travel the world.

Do us a favor. Go out. See the world. If you chance upon LGBT-owned and LGBT-friendly hotels, restos and other establishments, tell us about it. We dream of a Philippines that recognizes LGBTs and promotes LGBT travel, with an formal alliance of LGBT-friendly establishments. This will happen as long as we do our part. So do yours, go out, travel and tell us which deserves to be included in the WEEQENDER.