We recently connected with Travel Daddyz and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Travel Daddyz, thanks for joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

Matt and I were attending a college friend’s wedding in Cabo San Lucas a few years ago when Travel Daddyz was born. We have always loved to travel, but it was more of a personal and private experience. Many of our friends at the time enjoyed seeing our journeys and adventures so they began to encourage us to start to share things more publicly. We thought it would be fun as a gay couple to share our experiences from around the US and around the world. As we started to get on board with this idea that our friends had we needed to come up with a name. We did some brainstorming and came to the conclusion that we would use a little slang and call ourselves “daddies”. To make sure people understood we changed the spelling of daddies slightly to Daddyz. We still have to explain to some people who ask where our kids are that we are not dads, but we are “Daddyz.” We are sharing our education on travel with those who are interested in following along. We thank our friends who brought the Travel Daddyz to life one weekend in Cabo San Lucas in 2021.

Travel Daddyz, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We are a gay couple who loves to travel. Our names are Matt and Kyle and we have been together since 2013. We travel the world and show things from a gay couple’s perspective. At one point we also realized we live in a place where people from all over the world come to visit for wine tasting; therefore, we added local travel and wineries into our business model. Finally we heard a fascinating statistic about Sonoma County a few years ago. Per capita we are number two in the nation for LGBTQ+ identifying individuals. We looked around and realized there weren’t any gay bars in Santa Rosa nor were there a lot of queer events. We didn’t want to open up a bar ourselves so we decided that we would try to plan a drag show and a pop up gay bar for a night. Our first event was with Cacophony Daniels from NYC and it was in September 2023. Since then we have become full on promoters and producers of queer events with drag queens, comedians, and other performers. We have expanded to bringing shows to multiple cities from Anchorage, Alaska to Reno, NV. This October we are planning a tour with Tina Burner, Scarlet Envy, and Alexis Michelle called Witch Perfect that will be 15+ cities. We are really enjoying this new job role that we have taken on. It is so much fun to see and hear people’s reactions to these shows that we produce. The connections and people we have met along the way has been amazing and we can’t wait to keep going. We did not think this is where we would be today so the possibilities are endless for the future. We want everyone out there to have a place in the world and feel included. Everyone in the LGBTQ+ community is welcomed at our events and we try to be representative of all different aspects of the community as well.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Matt and I have been together since 2013 and married since 2017. We met in Reno, NV through an app. At the time neither of us were looking for something long term, but here we are many years later. We initially went on a date at a bar called Flowing Tide for food and drinks. The conversation flowed easily and we got along really well. We exchanged phone numbers and hung out again the following afternoon. From then on everything felt very easy and we continued to talk all the time. It was a great start to our love story. When it came time to planning our events and added business partners to our list of titles it seemed like an easy transition. Since starting this business we have learned even more about each other than we previously knew so it has been challenging, but also amazing!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I feel like we are currently in a time of pivoting or figuring out our next steps. Currently the promoter/producer/content creator job has been kind of our side job. Kyle is a full time nurse and Matt works at the local Sonoma County airport. As our events expand to other cities and states it is requiring more of our time and energy. We are also both going through some changes at our jobs that are making us rethink things. Due to this we are looking at all of our options and will be most likely making some changes. We are not sure how far this Travel Daddyz business will go, but we are having fun growing it and making people happy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://traveldaddyz.com
• Instagram: @TravelDaddyz
• Facebook: Travel Daddyz