The Southern Comfort Conference Celebrates 25th Year in Fort Lauderdale

The largest transgender conference in the nation has relocated to Fort Lauderdale to celebrate its 25th year.

The four-day Southern Comfort Conference (SCC) will be held at Bonaventure Resort and Spa, 250 Racquet Club Rd, Weston, from Sept. 29 to Oct. 6, bringing in between 600 and 700 transgender people, families and allies to Fort Lauderdale.

The SCC originated in 1991 as a way to provide an educational conference for the transgender community to speak with professionals that handle services in the transgender community, said Lexi Dee, the president of the SCC. It has since evolved to include fun, tourist events and significant speakers.

"We're really excited to be in a new venue in Fort Lauderdale," Dee said. "When we were approached by Fort Lauderdale, we looked at the property and were impressed."

For the past 24 years, Atlanta, Georgia, hosted the event, but Dee said returning members had begun to get tired of the old venue and wanted a fresh change that Fort Lauderdale could provide.

"Fort Lauderdale has been wonderful," she said. "We've had absolutely no issues with anybody in our hotel, any of the restaurant and the places we've been. The directors and volunteers who have visited have had nothing but good experiences."

Richard Gray, the LGBT managing director of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau, said he's made it his goal to target transgender tourists. He said he realized a few months ago that the transgender members of the LGBT community didn't get much attention or focus by traveling companies and organizations.

"I had an opportunity to bring the 'T' to the forefront of LGBT," he said.

Gray and his team put together the first ever transgender research study on travelling in North America, he said.

"We knew they liked to travel," he said. "We wanted to find out what types of hotels they liked to stay in...where they felt most comfortable."

Gray said they looked at whether transgender individuals liked to travel alone, how important safety was and other entities. He found out that Fort Lauderdale was ranked number 9 as a travel destination and part of the reason why was because a famous transgender surgeon was located in the area.

The Greater Fort Lauderdale CVB put together a campaign called, "Where Happy Meets Go Lucky," which featured transgender models. And they even created a landing page online for transgender travelers.

"We're the only tourist board in the world that has even remotely addressed it in a stellar way," Gray said. "We've led the way on this platform. Fort Lauderdale is the epicenter of the LGBT community in Florida."

Broward County-local Jazz Jennings, star of the "I Am Jazz" TLC series and transgender activist, will be signing copies of her book and giving a speech at the event. Zackary Drucker, a producer and actress for TV series including Amazon's "Transparent" and "This is Me," will also be speaking.

The hotel rooms blocked for the event have already been booked up, and Gray said the event is already exceeding expectations.

"I think it's all about respect, and we respect this market," he said. "Our expectation is to better educate our resident lesbian and gay community, but also mainstream allies."

As the first CVB to have a department dedicated to LGBT travelers, Greater Fort Lauderdale continues to express commitment to the LGBT community in every way possible, Gray said.