When Lawrence Phillips left his consulting job in 2015 to travel around the world, he mapped his route through 30 countries based partly on feedback from other travelers who were Black.
Finding out what he could expect as a Black traveler in a particular destination was sometimes labor intensive. It often involved asking Black travelers about their experiences if he was lucky enough to run into one, or perusing blog posts and online reviews to find one that might (emphasis on might) include the perspective of a person of color.
“You might find a blog post here and there, but it’s also one person’s opinion,” he said. “I want 10 to 15 people’s points of view if I can. I was looking for a platform or website where I could find something like that, and it didn’t exist.”
A Black Travel Platform
His frustration over the limited information about the experiences of Black travelers planted the seed for his startup, Green Book Global.
The Black travel platform enables members to leave reviews of cities and to earn rewards for booking vacation rentals, hotels, flights, and activities. Cities are rated on nine dimensions, one of which is what it’s like to travel there as a Black person. Reviewers address issues like, is there racism? Are there areas where Black travelers feel more welcome?
Black travelers spent nearly $109 billion on travel in the U.S. in 2019, according to MMGY Global. Yet about 42% of these travelers feel unwelcome at their destination, according to a survey of 4,800 Black travelers and 200 members of the National Coalition of Black Meeting Professionals (NCBMP).
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The platform’s mission is to “inspire and empower Black travelers to safely explore the world and to do so unapologetically.”
“It’s really just the data and the information we’re able to share with Black travelers to give them some confidence and reduce their anxiety whenever they travel somewhere,” he said.
Membership is free, but members can pay a nominal fee to reap more travel rewards and benefits. Green Book Global also has a mobile app to make it easier to look up reviews and to book travel on the go.
The legacy of the Green Book
The original Green Book was a guide for Black motorists to accommodations, restaurants, and garages that offered them service during the time of racial segregation in the United States. The guides were available at gas stations and sold as many as 15,000 copies a year, according to HistoryVsHollywood.com.
Titled the Negro Travelers’ Green Book, the guide was first published by Victor H. Green in 1936. Publication ended in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all laws allowing segregation of public schools and public accommodations as well as laws banning interracial marriage.
The 2018 movie, Green Book, depicts the true story of chauffeur Tony Lip and musician Don Shirley as they travel through the South together and use the Green Book to avoid “sundown towns,” cities and neighborhoods where segregation was still in force.
In Georgia, where Lawrence lives with his wife and 3-year-old daughter in Atlanta, the Legislature didn’t revoke segregation laws until 1961, and it took another decade to enforce a court-ordered desegregation plan, according to the Library of Congress.
Traveling while Black
Lawrence’s parents immigrated to the United States from Barbados, and he grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. Barbados also has a history of slavery but ended the practice in 1834, 31 years earlier than in the United States, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
During his world tour, Lawrence experienced a few scary moments – though he doesn’t know if racism was the cause. While taking a taxi van to the Great Wall of China, he got into an argument with the taxi driver who was enraged because Lawrence had taken a photo of the vehicle for his travel blog.
“When I get inside the van, this guy’s screaming at me,” Lawrence recounted. “Long story short, I finally get out of the van. He tries to run me over with the vehicle. It ended up being a very big ordeal over something super simple. I don’t know how much race contributed to that versus just the wrong day at the wrong time.”
Black Travel Review Month
In August 2023, Green Book Global launched the first Black Travel Review Month to encourage more travelers to leave reviews of destinations. In partnership with Expedia, Green Book Global offered $6,000 in giveaways. Each person who left a review was entered into the giveaway.
The platform’s Instagram page has more than 100,000 followers, but the number of reviews lags behind the interest in the site, Lawrence said.
“People really just thought about us as an IG page to promote Black travel but didn’t necessarily know about the reviews behind the images and videos that we have,” he said. “So Black Travel Review Month was an opportunity for us to really showcase that we’re more than just nice, inspiring pictures.”
Black Travel Review Month brought in about 500 reviews, bringing the platform’s total reviews up to about 6,500.
The promotion of the event also helped Green Book Global to gain more attention from its target market through features stories published in Business Insider, Black Enterprise Magazine, Travel Noire, and Thrillist.
Boston, Lawrence’s hometown, has garnered several reviews on Green Book Global. One member, Edmund Spratling, gave tips on places in Boston that are most friendly to Black travelers.
“As with any city, Boston has its fair share of trouble and being aware of your surroundings is a must,” Edmund wrote on Sept. 6, 2023. “South Boston is where you may experience racism, but for the most part it’s mild and passive. Dorchester and Roxbury are the heart of Black peoples Boston. You’ll find a lot of history and banging food there.”
August was also Black Owned Business Month, which is another focus of Green Book Global.
Lawrence’s goal is to eventually plot Black-owned businesses on the platform’s maps so that travelers can find them during their trips in different cities.
“Now you can start to have more of an actionable kind of travel experience to help plan your trip,” he said.
Continuing the Black travel legacy
Green Book Global has also renewed attention to and awareness of the original Green Book.
At the Invest Fest in Atlanta in August 2023, Lawrence shared the story of the original Green Book and how he developed Green Book Global to revive the focus on Black travel and safety and comfort while traveling.
The conference, focused on Black culture and Black investments, drew about 20,000 attendees.
“A lot of people don’t know about the Green Book even though they are Black, or they might have heard of it and not really known what it is,” Lawrence said, “so when we gave them the spiel about what the old Green Book was and what the new Green Book is now, so many eyes lit up. It really resonated with the community.”
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