Country first, then city, then hotel
Almost everyone does it backwards. They find a nice hotel, look at the city and take the country for granted. For an LGBTQI+ traveller that order fails, because the variable that matters most is also the one that gets checked least.
This directory covers 200 countries. In 66 of them same-sex relations are criminalised. That's the same figure the Human Dignity Trust gives, and theirs is the most cited register of this.
Within those 66 there are degrees. The Human Dignity Trust counts twelve countries with jurisdictions where the death penalty is imposed or at least possible, and notes that in at least six it is actually carried out. It also counts 42 countries that explicitly criminalise relations between women, and thirteen that criminalise gender identity or expression through laws against "cross-dressing" or "impersonation". That last figure changes the calculation if you are trans: there are destinations where the problem isn't who you travel with but your paperwork.
Another ten countries fit neither side. They are very different cases: unequal ages of consent, laws still on the books but not enforced, criminalisation in a single region of the country, or relations legal in private with "public expression" punished. Those ten have to be read one by one, because the headline doesn't hold.
No hotel fixes that. Which is why the first question isn't where you sleep but which country you land in.
The law and the street don't move together
This is where guides tend to flatten things. A country having marriage equality doesn't mean the street is comfortable, and a country lacking it doesn't mean you'll have a problem.
Only 39 of the 200 have marriage equality. Another fifteen recognise something else: civil unions, registered partnerships, marriages performed abroad, or specific rights such as a partner's access to health cover. Together they don't reach one country in four. But within that group the social climate varies enormously, and outside it there are cities where nobody will give you a second look.
So here every country carries three separate things: what the law says, how social acceptance stands, and what violence is documented. You can read them apart because they don't always point the same way. A country can be fine on paper and awkward on the street, or the other way round.
The five-step level on each page sums that up. It's for ruling places out quickly, and for knowing where you need to read the small print.
Paperwork
Two things that cause trouble and get solved before you leave.
First, the passport. If your name or gender marker doesn't match what appears on your other documents — the booking, the boarding pass, the credit card — that creates friction at desks and borders. In most destinations it isn't a legal problem, it's a time-and-explaining problem. Having everything match saves you the conversation.
Second, medication. Carry it in its original packaging, with the prescription, and write down the name of the active ingredient separately, which is what a foreign pharmacy will understand. If you take PrEP or antiretrovirals, check the country's entry rules first: some destinations require you to declare the medicines you carry and others apply restrictions to people living with HIV. That changes, and you check it on the destination's consular website, not on a forum.
Insurance
Travelling inside the European Union, the European Health Insurance Card gives you the same treatment rights as a resident, for anything that can't wait until you get home. It doesn't cover private healthcare, or planned treatment, or — this is the one that catches people — rescue and repatriation. That needs separate cover.
Outside the EU, always take travel insurance. In the United States an emergency without it runs into thousands of dollars.
What changes after dark
A city can be two different cities depending on the hour. The tourist centre at midday and the same street at three in the morning don't resemble each other, and that holds for any traveller, not just us.
The practical part: look at where you're sleeping in relation to where you'll be going out. Ten minutes on foot and a taxi at 3am are not the same thing. On our city pages we always say how far the scene sits from where it makes sense to sleep, because few people do that sum before booking.
On hookup apps there is one detail worth holding onto. Human Rights Watch documented twenty cases of police entrapment through Grindr and Facebook in Egypt, Iraq and Jordan in a 2023 report on the Middle East and North Africa. In a low-rated destination, deleting them before you land isn't paranoia.
When to go
Pride changes a city for a week, and it changes the prices too. If that's what you're going for, book months ahead. If it isn't, checking the calendar saves you paying triple to sleep.
One more thing, less obvious. In destinations with a small scene, travelling off-season can mean finding half the venues shut. We say so on the city pages when that's the case.
In short
Choose the country by reading the law and the social climate separately. Choose the city by where the scene is and how far it sits from where you'd sleep. Choose the hotel last, because it's the decision that matters least of the three.
