• by Tanya Gazdik , August 4, 2011

Hyatt Hotels and Absolut Vodka are the first sponsors of GayCities' Answers Q&A feature.

The community-driven gay and lesbian city guide and travel site debuted the new feature on the site earlier this week. It enables members to tap into the collective wisdom of the community to provide answers to everyday questions. Members can share their knowledge about their home towns and anywhere they travel.

As part of the launch, the hotel's Hyatt Concierge program will ask and answer questions about the best places, events and experiences in select domestic markets. Hyatt's diversity agency, Prime Access, facilitated the program with GayCities.

Hyatt ads are featured prominently on each of the city pages for the Answers section of the Web site. The hotel company previously advertised in other sections of the GayCities Web site.

"Hyatt returned to GayCities for the third year in a row, more than doubling their spend with us this year from last," Scott Gatz, founder and CEO of GayCities, tells Marketing Daily. "This year, they asked us to come up with something that would leverage our social media expertise in this community and do something that went above and beyond."

Hyatt is Answers' exclusive launch sponsor for our nationwide rollout and has sponsorship and road-blocked all our answers pages for a three-month campaign, Gatz says. The Absolut SF campaign partnered with GayCities Answers to engage customers around the best night out in San Francisco.

"As part of the Absolut San Francisco campaign, we are offering an exclusive promotion where the leading local drag personality will host a one-of-a-kind private dinner party for the person who answers: 'What is the best night out in SF,'" Gatz says. "The exclusive San Francisco Answers promotion runs for one month, although Absolut continues with a media buy throughout the year."

GayCities has worked with Absolut's LGBT agency in the past, Gatz says. "When Absolut picked San Francisco as their focus city for 2011, the agency turned to us knowing our reach in the LGBT market," he adds. "We pulled together our relationships in SF (our hometown) to create a one-of-a-kind SF experience for a winner of a promotion. Absolut liked that it reinforced their citywide campaign "What is your Absolut SF?" in the LGBT market."

GayCities brings together mobile check-ins, reviews, questions and answers and up-to-date listings of bars, clubs, restaurants, shops, hotels and other venues in over 200 cities via the Web site and iPhone app. GayCities reaches over 450,000 visitors each month and another 600,000 through its sister site, Queerty.com, a LGBT news and entertainment site.