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 travel is more than where you sleep. Every destination has its own culture, personality, and atmosphere, and the same place can feel completely different depending on who's experiencing it.
For many Black travelers, that raises questions traditional travel websites rarely answer.
Will I actually enjoy staying here? Will I feel welcomed? Is this hotel worth the price? What's 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 mission is to build a trusted travel resource that helps Black travelers discover destinations, understand the cultural context of the places they visit, and make informed decisions with confidence. From hotels and restaurants to nightlife, attractions, and neighborhoods, we believe understanding the experience is just as important as finding the lowest price.
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 travel with confidence because you know what to expect before you arrive.
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 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. Our rankings combine hospitality expertise, verified guest experiences, editorial research, and ongoing evaluation to identify the places that consistently deliver exceptional experiences. But travel is about more than service scores and beautiful rooms. 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 websites are excellent at measuring amenities, prices, and locations. They rarely measure something just as important: cultural context. For Black travelers, that context matters.
It can influence how welcomed you feel, whether you see yourself reflected in the people around you, the atmosphere of a venue, and ultimately how memorable a trip becomes. Those experiences are real, yet they are often missing from traditional travel rankings. That's where BlkTravel is different.
Rather than relying on a single opinion, we look for patterns across hundreds of guest experiences, creator content, hospitality standards, and our own editorial research. We evaluate consistency because consistency is what travelers can reasonably expect when they arrive.
Our goal isn't simply to tell you where to stay, eat, or spend your evening. Our goal is to become the trusted resource that helps Black travelers spend their money with confidence while recognizing the hotels, restaurants, businesses, and destinations that consistently create outstanding experiences for our community.
Because great travel isn't just about finding the highest-rated place.
It's about finding the place that's right for you.
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.