OAKLAND, Calif. – Judy Dlugacz knew she was onto something when the cruise ship she had chartered for 400 lesbians arrived in the Turkish port of Kusadasi.
Instead of meeting rejection, as they sometimes did in the United States, the travelers got a red carpet welcome from merchants eager to do business with the “lovely lesbian ladies.” The half-million dollars they poured into Turkey’s economy made the front pages of Istanbul’s major newspapers.
“When hundreds of women get off a ship and go shopping, they are noticed,” Dlugacz said.
Four years later, the venture Dlugacz founded as a tiny women’s record label in 1973 – named Olivia after a character in a lesbian-themed pulp novel from 1949 – is making waves again.
Olivia Cruises and Resorts, the Oakland-based “lifestyle company,” produced a Boston-to-Montreal wedding celebration and luxury honeymoon cruise this past weekend for 1,200 women, featuring Grammy-winning singer k.d. lang as entertainment.
The ship, Holland America’s MS Maasdam, set sail Saturday night from Boston.
The honeymoon excursion was announced in December, less than a month after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling that gays and lesbians could obtain marriage licenses in the state. After legal challenges that threatened to block the unions, the weddings commenced May 17.
“It’s been fun having customers call you and say ‘I’m going on my honeymoon,’ and it’s not just a metaphor,” said Amy Errett, Olivia’s chief executive officer.
Co-owners Errett and Dlugacz both married longtime partners during the month same-sex couples were able to tie the knot in San Francisco earlier this year.
In March, Olivia, www.olivia.com, became the first business owned and operated by gays to sponsor a professional athlete, signing an endorsement deal with golfer Rosie Jones on the LGPA tour.
Olivia also has worked on making its vacation offerings as sophisticated and diverse as the tastes of its frequently misunderstood market.
This fall, for example, Showtime’s lesbian drama “The L-word” will film part of an episode aboard an Olivia cruise to the Caribbean. Cast members are scheduled to socialize with guests at the company’s first shipboard film festival and be serenaded by Shawn Colvin and Indigo Girls.
Another upcoming trip, set at a resort in Mexico, is a sports-themed vacation featuring golfer Jones, tennis pro Rosie Casals and swimmer turned broadcaster Diana Nyad.
Securing such talent doesn’t come cheap, but neither do Olivia’s vacations, which range from $599 to $14,000 per person. Errett says her customers, who are an average age of 46 and have an average annual income of $80,000, want world-class accommodations and entertainment.
“It’s an interesting and much more educated group than people think,” she said, acknowledging that much of straight America still views lesbians as favoring flannel shirts and inexpensive country living.
Despite its increasingly upscale image, Olivia has maintained the strong social mission that was at its core when Dlugacz founded the record label, which became produced pioneering lesbian singers Cris Williamson and Meg Christian. For many guests, an Olivia vacation is the first time they can openly hold hands and kiss while they travel.
“It is not just music and it is not just travel,” she said. “There is also the piece of serving a community simply by creating a place to be free.”
The entrepreneurs already are making plans for Olivia’s next incarnation, a series of gay and lesbian retirement communities that mirror the company’s resort-chic image.
“I like to think of us as the lesbian Disney,” said Errett.
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