Gay Americans Promote Montreal Tourism

Tourisme Montreal has enlisted a number of well-known gay Americans to promote LGBT tourism. From yesterday's Montreal Gazette:

A parade of American celebrities and local vedettes filmed a video series of performances and interviews in Montreal this summer to help promote the city to gay travelers, in Tourisme Montreal’s new Do Your Thing In MTL video series. Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir, singer-songwriter Jonny “Gay Pimp” McGovern, trans drag performer Carmen Carrera from the TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race, as well as local stars, lesbian comedian DeAnne Smith and Montreal drag legend Mado Lamotte, all star in their own video clips. Tourisme Montreal commissioned the video series is to attract young LGBT travelers to Montreal, which is hailed as one of the world’s great gay meccas.

“Montreal is now a ‘mature’ destination, like Canada is,” says Charles Lapointe, the president and CEO of Tourisme Montreal.“We are no longer the taste of the day. We have a very good repeat clientele, but they are also a bit older. So [over the past four years] we switched our strategy, with our international Queer of the Year Contest, to appeal to a younger clientele, and we’re making headway there. We also have a new [Montreal] TV show coming out on Logo TV in 2014. So we’re still trying very hard to be the most original.”

Hit the link for many clips, some of which began appearing on YouTube early this summer.

(Tipped by JMG reader Bugs)