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Lez Travel: Olivia

Olivia is a company offering a variety of services for lesbians, founded by Judy Dlugacz as a women’s record label in 1973 and since then “The Olivia Companies” have continued to expand to include Olivia Travel, Olivia.com, and an Olivia Community in Tucson, Arizona.

Olivia Travel offered its first all-woman cruise in 1990 and remains the only company in the world offering cruises that cater only to lesbians, according to Wikipedia.

“Olivia was created to serve a lesbian market that ranges from women who must live quietly in suburbia, to women who have the freedom to walk the streets holding hands. I am extremely blessed to have been part of this amazing experience. When the company launched 35 years ago, I never dreamed Olivia would become the company that it is today,” says Judy Dlugacz, President and Founder of Olivia.

According to the Olivia.com website 98% of the women who travel with Olivia Travel return.

This is due largely to the fact that Olivia cruises include exclusive entertainment for lesbians which includes popular celebrities such as Melissa Etheridge, kd lang, Heart, Belinda Carlisle, The Go Gos, Indigo Girls and Paula Cole; sports stars such as Sheryl Swoops, Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Rosie Jones and comedians like Margaret Cho, Whoopi Goldberg, and Lily Tomlin.

The lesbian travel company prides itself on “featuring both international superstars and the latest up-and-coming performers, thereby catering to a wide cross section of women”.

Olivia rolled out its Sistas at Sea™ and Sistas at Play™ programs for lesbians of color; and in April 2008, one of the stars of the popular lesbian series “The L Word”, Leisha Hailey, signed on as Olivia’s spokesperson and voice to the company. The L Word featured the cruise line in some of their episodes, highlighting the fact that Olivia is part of the lives of most lesbians who love to travel. Leisha Hailey attracts fans of The L Word to the Olivia brand.

You can read more about what it’s like on an Olivia vacation on About.com here or watch a YouTube video commercial for Olivia.com below:

You can also find a social networking community on Olivia.com called Olivia Connect.

This portion of their website allows lesbians online to network and communicate, find out more about Olivia and its lesbian-friendly partners, and talk about their trips with Olivia Cruises. You can find my profile on Olivia Connect here where you will find that I post articles I write for the portion of Olivia Connect called Olivia Voices. Olivia Voices are blogs by lesbians online sharing their voices on different topics of interest to other lesbians. You can find my voice on Olivia here where I share the articles that I write for my blog Lesbian Mommy and LezGetReal.

I hope that you enjoyed this article and learning more about what Olivia has to offer lesbians worldwide.