About US
Travel Isn't One Size Fits All
Millions of people book vacations every year using the same handful of travel websites. Those sites are excellent at comparing prices, showing room photos, and listing amenities. But they rarely answer the questions many Black travelers find themselves asking before booking.
Will I actually enjoy staying here? Will I feel welcomed? Is this hotel worth the price? What is the atmosphere really like? Is this somewhere I'd recommend to my family and friends? At BlkTravel, we believe those questions deserve answers.
We created BlkTravel to be more than another booking website or collection of hotel reviews. Our goal is to build a trusted resource where Black travelers can discover destinations, compare experiences, and make informed travel decisions based on the perspectives of people who understand what matters to our community.
Whether you're planning a weekend getaway, a family vacation, a luxury escape, or your first trip overseas, our purpose is simple. We want you to book with confidence.
Our Rankings
Every major hotel brand has people whose job is to inspect hotels. Restaurants have secret shoppers. Retail stores conduct operational audits. Airlines measure customer satisfaction. Companies spend millions of dollars every year making sure their customers receive a consistent experience.
Travelers don't have that advantage.
Most people are forced to sort through hundreds of reviews written by strangers with different expectations, different priorities, and completely different travel styles. One guest gives a hotel five stars because the pool was beautiful. Another gives it one star because the parking was expensive. Neither review necessarily tells you what your experience will be.
BlkTravel exists to bridge that gap.
We approach travel the way a quality assurance team approaches a business. We evaluate destinations, hotels, restaurants, nightlife, and attractions using hospitality standards while combining them with something traditional travel websites cannot measure on their own: the collective experiences of Black travelers.
Our rankings are built from hospitality expertise, verified guest experiences, community feedback, editorial research, and ongoing evaluation. Rather than relying on a single opinion, we look for patterns. Consistency matters more than isolated experiences because consistency is what travelers can reasonably expect when they arrive.
Our goal is not simply to tell you where to stay. Our goal is to become a trusted voice that helps Black travelers spend their money with confidence while recognizing the businesses and destinations that consistently provide exceptional experiences for our community.
Meet the Founder
Ronald C. Curtis II
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Before creating BlkTravel, I spent years building my career in hospitality, serving as a General Manager and Regional Manager for 15 years in properties ranging from Extended Stay hotels to Marriott Brands. During that time, I learned something that most travelers never get to see.
Every hotel brand has an identity.
Luxury brands are designed to deliver one type of experience. Lifestyle brands deliver another. Extended stay hotels have a different purpose than select service hotels. Behind every brand are years of research, planning, quality standards, and training designed to create a consistent guest experience. Employees are taught those differences from the day they're hired.
Guests rarely are.
Most travelers choose hotels based on price, location, or photos without ever understanding why one brand exists or who it was designed to serve. I realized there was an opportunity to bridge that gap by helping travelers understand not just where to stay, but which experiences fit them best.
As my career progressed, I noticed something else.
As a Black General Manager, I regularly had Black guests tell me that one of the best parts of their stay wasn't the room or the breakfast. It was that they felt seen. They felt welcomed. They felt appreciated. Many told me it was one of the first times they genuinely felt a hotel wanted their business.
That stayed with me.
When I traveled, I began paying closer attention to the experiences of other Black travelers. I noticed the same patterns being discussed again and again, but those conversations rarely made it beyond family group chats, social media posts, or conversations between friends.
Meanwhile, the travel industry relied heavily on overall review scores that reflected millions of voices combined into a single number. Those ratings are valuable, but they don't always tell the whole story. The experiences of Black travelers can easily become a small part of a much larger conversation, making it difficult to identify patterns that matter to our community.
That's why I created BlkTravel.
BlkTravel is designed to give Black travelers a dedicated platform where our experiences are documented, shared, and recognized. It's a place where exceptional businesses can earn recognition for consistently serving our community well, and where recurring problems can be identified instead of disappearing into thousands of unrelated reviews.
My hope is that BlkTravel becomes more than a travel website. I want it to become a trusted voice for Black travelers and a source of valuable feedback for an industry that genuinely wants to serve every guest well.
Because every traveler deserves to feel welcomed. Every traveler deserves to feel valued. And every traveler deserves to know what kind of experience they're booking before they arrive.