Gay Airbnb: the best alternatives for gay travelers

Let’s get one thing straight – we love using Airbnb on our travels. It’s the perfect way to find an inexpensive home base in a new city as well as being a fab way to connect with locals.

With that said, Airbnb is sorely lacking when it comes to offering gay and gay-friendly accommodation options. Along with many others,  we have long called for the addition of a gay-friendly search filter on the site. At the moment, it seems that our suggestions have fallen on deaf ears.

Luckily, Airbnb is not the only option open to LGBTQ+ travelers seeking inclusive accommodation at an affordable rate. Sites are popping up across the world offering travelers a range of accommodation options that pride themselves on being welcoming to all.

In this article, we will take a look at some of the best alternatives to Airbnb for gay travelers focusing on the mother of them all – Misterbnb.

Is Airbnb gay friendly?

Overall, we feel that Airbnb is a gay-friendly company. They frequently confirm as much with their pro-LGBTQ public relations campaigns. We support this and love their content centered around the #HostWithPride campaign in particular. 

In addition, Airbnb operates a strict anti-discrimination policy that forbids users from refusing to host on the grounds of who they love, their race, and a variety of other factors. Of course, how this is implemented in practice is another matter altogether. There is nothing to stop a homophobic host from outright rejecting me and Seby, and not having to provide a reason for doing so!

Where Airbnb falls short is in its refusal to provide a gay-friendly search option or at least the ability to search for “gay” as a keyword when searching for listings. In many countries around the world, being gay is either illegal or a taboo that can get you into a lot of trouble. In these sorts of destinations, there is no way of searching for gay friendly hosts on Airbnb other than to outrightly ask them and hope they answer in the positive, or book it and take the risk!

Thankfully, alternatives to Airbnb do exist that allow gay travelers to identify hosts that are gay friendly and won't discriminate, which we out below.

Misterb&b

With over a million listings across two hundred countries, Misterb&b is one of the world’s leading gay-friendly accommodation sites. It was founded in Paris by Matthieu Jost, who had the idea for the site after being discriminated by an Airbnb host during a trip to Barcelona with his husband. Initially aimed towards gay cisgender men when they launched back in 2013, Misterb&b has more recently embraced a fully inclusive identity that welcomes hosts and guests of all genders. 

Essentially, the primary mission of the site is to match LGBTQ travelers with LGBTQ-friendly hosts in cities around the world. With 200,000 hosts in over 135 countries, this site is simply one of the best alternatives to Airbnb for LGBTQ travelers that we have found. Misterb&b has coverage worldwide but the widest variety of hosts and stays are available in Europe and the USA. With that said, Misterb&B has more options available globally than any other gay-friendly accommodation site around.

At Misterb&b you can search using a range of parameters including whether your host is “gay” or simply “gay-friendly” hosts. There is no charge for posting an apartment or room for rent on Misterb&b, but they take 14% of the room fare from the host and 12% of the total paid by the guest.

As if this site was not convincing enough in itself, it has been featured in many top news outlets, including Forbes, which called Misterb&b the “gay Airbnb”.

Other gay alternatives to Airbnb

There are a handful of other sites we've found that are more destination-specific, appealing to a particular online gay audience:

• #TravelProud by Booking.com: the largest online booking site has started giving properties that have undergone inclusivity training the #TravelProud rainbow stamp. Whilst you cannot (yet) search properties using the #TravelProud filter, it's a welcome addition to the online hotel booking market. For an example listing, check out the Brussels Marriott Hotel Grand Place.
• Gay Sejour: a popular listing site for the French-speaking world listing guesthouses, vacation rentals, hotels, and campsites.
• Purple Roofs: one of the first listing sites for the online gay community, dating back to 1999, featuring gay-owned and gay friendly accommodations.
• EBAB: stands for ‘Enjoy Bed and Breakfast'. It is based in Berlin and features LGBTQ+ listings from all around the world.
• Gaystay New Zealand: active since 2016, this gay accommodation portal continues to be the first and only home-sharing company dedicated to LGBTQ travelers and hosts in New Zealand.