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Mercedes Hutton
Mercedes Hutton

Destinations known | Sex tourism is changing as travellers seek pleasure in adult-only resorts. Can Asia keep up?

  • In the region, sex tourism is often equated with prostitution and synonymous with destinations across Thailand and the Philippines
  • Young adventurers want to make sex-related travel safe and consensual, and a growing number of resorts are springing up to offer that

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Adult-only, sex-positive resorts are growing in popularity internationally. Photo: Shutterstock
Mercedes Hutton

Millennials! First they spoiled your summer holiday with their incessant selfie taking, then they disrupted the travel industry as we knew it.

They’ve ripped apart package tours (RIP Thomas Cook), eschew hotel stays for “authentic experiences” and swap aeroplanes for overland transport in an effort to minimise their carbon footprints and make everyone else feel guilty about flying. Now, millennials and their even-more enlightened zoomer peers are coming for the “sanctity” that is sex tourism.
According to Wikipedia, sex tourism is “travel to a different locale for the sake of sexual activity, particularly with prostitutes”. In Asia, the industry is synonymous with destinations such as Pattaya, in Thailand, and the Philippines’ Angeles City – places where unpleasant and extremely unsexy issues such as human trafficking, violence against women and sexually transmitted diseases are commonplace.
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However, young adventurers are bringing sex-related travel into the 21st century and remaking it as a decidedly more inclusive and ethically sound industry. How do they hope to achieve this? By eliminating payment for sex, for a start, and “finding more ethical ways to travel while horny than soliciting sex workers”, according to Vice magazine.

Pattaya’s Walking Street has long been a place where people go to engage in prostitution.
Pattaya’s Walking Street has long been a place where people go to engage in prostitution.
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Among the solutions are a growing number of adult-only, sex-positive resorts that provide a safe, consensual space in which to embrace all expressions of gender, orientation and relationship style. They range from “clothing optional” enclaves to properties that boast “playrooms” in which guests can, presumably, make more than friends.

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