Black travel is not a monolith

Black travel experiences are not monolithic. In fact, Black travelers increasingly express their dissatisfaction with tokenism and the performative nature of checking the diversity box. To keep an authentic conversation about Black lives in the travel space - the goal of this manuscript is to take a deeper look into the nexus and intersectionalities of Black travelers and how their experiences in the tourism landscape both collide and diverge from each other. As a research team, we interviewed several Black travel influencers, bloggers, and community leaders who all shared one strong message - Black travel is not a monolith. Informed by intersectionality theory and Black geographies, we identified four major themes around the challenges of marginalized identities of Black travelers inclusive of being: Black and a woman; Black and queer; Black across nationalities; and Black with a disability. By bridging the gap between academia and industry, our hope is to curate a future road map for Black travel that values and empowers intersecting identities of Black travelers.