About US
Travel Isn't One Size Fits All
Black Americans are a $145 billion travel market. In 2023, Black leisure travelers took more than 184 million trips and represented 11% of the U.S. leisure travel market. Recent research also found that 87% are willing to pay more for premium travel upgrades, while 79% say safety and a welcoming atmosphere strongly influence where they travel.
The opportunity for the travel industry is clear. But reaching Black travelers requires more than including us in general-market advertising and assuming the same message, information, and experiences will resonate equally with everyone.
Black travelers stay at the same hotels, visit the same destinations, dine at the same restaurants, and purchase the same premium experiences as the broader travel market. We expect great service, quality, value, and memorable experiences for the money we spend. But how we experience a destination or brand can be different.
And Black travelers are not a monolith. We travel for luxury, family vacations, nightlife, romance, culture, adventure, relaxation, and everything in between. Too often, however, this enormous market is placed into a single demographic box rather than understood as travelers with different lifestyles, budgets, interests, and expectations.
That is where BlkTravel comes in.
BlkTravel is a travel discovery and review platform built for Black travelers. We help our audience understand not only where to go, but what to expect when they get there. Will I enjoy staying here? Will I feel welcomed? Is it worth the price? What is the atmosphere actually like? Is this somewhere I would recommend to my family and friends?
From hotels and restaurants to nightlife, attractions, neighborhoods, and experiences, BlkTravel combines the things every traveler cares about, including service, quality, cleanliness, and value, with something traditional travel platforms rarely measure: Black Traveler Comfort.
For travelers, that means better information and more confidence in where they spend their money. For destinations and travel brands, it means a better opportunity to understand and connect with an audience already spending billions.
Our mission is simple: get the right traveler to the right businesses, for both of their sakes.
Meet the Founder
Ronald C. Curtis II
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Before creating BlkTravel, I spent 15 years building my career in hospitality, from hotel operations to serving as a General Manager and Regional Manager across properties ranging from extended-stay hotels to Marriott brands. That career taught me something most travelers never get to see: great travel experiences don't happen by accident.
Behind every hotel, destination, restaurant, attraction, and experience are decisions about who the customer is, what they value, what atmosphere is being created, and ultimately, who the experience is designed to serve.
Hospitality gave me an inside look at that process. Being a Black hospitality leader gave me another perspective entirely.
Throughout my career, Black guests would sometimes tell me that what stood out most about their stay wasn't the room or the breakfast. It was that they felt seen, welcomed, and genuinely valued as customers. Those conversations stayed with me because they revealed something much larger than hotels.
I began noticing it everywhere I traveled.
The same destination can feel completely different depending on who's experiencing it. The restaurant everyone recommends may not deliver the same experience for everyone. A neighborhood described as having “great nightlife” may not offer what we're actually looking for. A highly rated resort can be beautiful while still leaving a traveler wondering whether it was really the right place for them.
Meanwhile, Black travelers were already answering these questions for one another. We did it in group chats, Facebook groups, social media comments, conversations with friends, and the simple question we've all asked someone we trust: “Have you been? What did you think?” The information existed. What was missing was a travel platform built to organize it.
That's why I created BlkTravel.
What began with my understanding of hotels grew into a much larger mission: creating a travel discovery platform that helps Black travelers understand where to stay, where to eat, what to do, where to go, and what they can reasonably expect when they get there. BlkTravel covers hotels, destinations, restaurants, nightlife, attractions, neighborhoods, culture, history, and experiences because travel isn't one transaction. It's the entire experience of being somewhere away from home.
My hospitality background still shapes how we approach that work. We care about service, quality, cleanliness, value, consistency, and whether a business delivers what it promises. But BlkTravel adds another layer: understanding those experiences through the perspective of the travelers we were built to serve. My goal is for BlkTravel to become a trusted travel resource for Black Americans and a meaningful bridge between our community and the destinations and businesses competing for our travel dollars.
We deserve great travel experiences. Businesses deserve the opportunity to reach travelers who are right for them. BlkTravel exists to help both find each other.
Our Rankings
Every major hotel brand has people whose job is to inspect hotels. Restaurants use secret shoppers. Retailers conduct operational audits. Airlines measure customer satisfaction. Companies spend millions of dollars every year trying to understand whether customers are receiving a consistent experience.
Black Travelers do not have that advantage.
Instead, we're left sorting through hundreds of reviews written by people with different expectations, priorities, budgets, and travel styles. One guest gives a hotel five stars because the pool was beautiful. Another gives it one star because parking was expensive. Both experiences may be valid, but neither necessarily tells you what your experience is likely to be.
BlkTravel is a travel discovery and review platform built to help Black travelers make that decision with greater confidence.
We approach travel the way a quality assurance team approaches a business. Our rankings combine hospitality expertise, verified guest experiences, editorial research, creator content, and ongoing evaluation to identify patterns in the places travelers stay, eat, visit, and experience. But travel is about more than service scores, beautiful rooms, and amenities. Travel is also cultural.
The same hotel, restaurant, lounge, or destination can feel completely different depending on who you are and how you're experienced by the people around you. Traditional travel platforms are excellent at measuring things like price, amenities, location, and overall guest satisfaction. They rarely measure something equally important to many Black travelers: cultural context. That context can influence how welcomed you feel, whether you see yourself reflected in the people around you, the atmosphere of a venue, and ultimately how comfortable and memorable an experience becomes. Those experiences are real, but they're often difficult to find in traditional travel rankings.
That's where BlkTravel is different.
One of the ways we account for that difference is through Black Traveler Comfort, a BlkTravel ranking measure designed to consider the cultural and experiential factors that can matter specifically to Black travelers alongside traditional measures of quality. Rather than relying on a single opinion, we look for patterns across guest experiences, creator content, hospitality standards, available data, and our own editorial research. We evaluate consistency because consistency gives travelers a better idea of what they can reasonably expect when they arrive.
Our rankings consider the complete experience, including service, cleanliness, value, atmosphere, overall experience, and Black Traveler Comfort, alongside factors relevant to the particular hotel, restaurant, destination, or experience being evaluated. Our goal isn't simply to tell you where to stay, where to eat, or where to spend your evening. Our goal is to make BlkTravel a trusted travel discovery resource for Black travelers, helping our community decide where to go, where to stay, and what to experience while recognizing the hotels, restaurants, businesses, and destinations that consistently create outstanding experiences. Because great travel isn't simply about finding the highest-rated place.
It's about finding the place that's right for you.