IT’S TIME TO GET BUSY!

This year is flying by and I never seem to have quite enough time to get everything done.  The 2008 Voice of Pride competition is almost ready to start and this looks like it may be the biggest and best season yet.  We have added another great prize to the $5,000 cash we already give to the winners.  This year our good friends at Orbitz have added some special gifts.  During the semi-final night and final night competitions, we will be raffling off two (2) tickets, round-trip anywhere in the US, and Canada to a lucky audience member.  Folks from the Voice of Pride crew will be walking around selling raffle tickets and we will draw for the winner right before the announcement of the winners on both nights.  In addition to that, this year’s winner of Voice of Pride will receive two (2) round trip tickets anywhere in the world that Delta Airlines flies.  Pretty sweet!  We want to say thank-you to Orbitz, Jeff Marsh and his team for their participation in this year’s event.

The 2008 Dallas International GLBT Press Trip was awesome and a huge success.  Once again, we dazzled our travel writers from around the world with great Dallas hospitality, interesting local attractions, delicious food and ample nightlife.  We had writers from Madrid, Spain; Cologne, Germany; London, England and Toronto and Montreal, Canada.  They met our wonderful mayor, Tom Leppert, Sheriff Lupe Valdez, and hung out with some of our city’s coolest and fun people (myself, not included).  Here are a couple pics from the trip.
 

If you want to see more, there are plenty of photos on this website in the DTG Photo Galleries.  These came from the library named, GLBT Press Tour 2008.

I just returned from Las Vegas and the 25^th Anniversary IGLTA Conference.  It was a great time and there was a record 460 attendees there representing 26 countries from all around the world.  I met some amazing new people and made some new friends to share travel stories with and new markets to sell Dallas to!  We took our latest “Hot Cowboys with us as usual.  Man, were they popular!  I wonder why?
  
Larry Minutella                                               Mike Davis

The weekend was amazing and I’m dropping in a couple photos just to tempt you.






If you want to see more, the full collection of photos from the trip are also in the DTG Photo Galleries link on this website.  It’s under Las Vegas IGLTA ’08.

The HX Media Travel trade Show is in town on may 20^th and we will help host travel agencies, destinations and hoteliers from all over the country with great discounts on trips, hotel packages, and other give-a-ways.  We are expecting a large turnout and will be there with our Hot Cowboys to hustle up some more business for Dallas.

The planning for Dallas’ 25^th Anniversary Edition of the Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade and Festival in Lee Park is well under way.  We have penned our Honorary Grand Marshal and “Hero” to be Marine Corps Reservist, Jeff Key.  Jeff enlisted in 2000 at the age of 34 and after the attack on September 11^th, 2001, he prepared to deploy to Eastern Iraq.  Jeff kept a journal while in Iraq, which has been developed into an award-winning, critically-acclaimed one-man play, The Eyes of Babylon” in which he also stars.


Upon his return home, he established the Mehadi Foundation, a non-profit organization (which he named for a young Iraqi boy he met there) designed to help the veterans of the Iraq war, specifically those who attempt to self-medicate PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) with drugs and alcohol. The foundation also supports philanthropic efforts to help rebuild homes and schools in Iraq and to provide clean water and healthy food to Iraqi civilians.

We are proud and honored to have Jeff as our special guest and he will be performing his captivating one-man play during Pride Week here in Dallas, as well as riding in our parade and speaking at the Festival in Lee Park.

Well, I can’t think of too much more to tell you right now, but just know that I am always busy trying to find new ways to make the Dallas GLBT community and the clubs of the Dallas Tavern Guild the best reasons for leisure and business travelers to visit our city.  We have created quite a buzz in the past 4 years since first implementing this marketing campaign and thanks to our great partners, we will continue to bring more and more folks to Dallas to visit and then return and talk about with all their friends.  So, I need to give a special shout-out to our key partners:




That’s all for now, but let me leave you with a little photo that may give you a chuckle.  It’s a blast from my past and I hope it amuses you as much as it does me … some 45 years later!

And there you have it!  OMG!!!!

We’ll talk again soon.  Keep watching and reading.

Until next time,