Luxury Traveling While Black: Season 2, Episode 11 of 'Let's Go Together'

Travel is on the rebound and we're here to celebrate it.

It's time to make plans together again, including family reunions, friendly getaways, romantic vacations, and solo adventures. We're shouting our excitement for the return of sightseeing and globe-trotting with all-new episodes of our podcast, Let's Go Together, which highlights how travel changes the way we see ourselves and the world.

In the first season, our pilot and adventurer host, Kellee Edwards, introduced listeners to diverse globe-trotters who showed us that travelers come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life. From the first Black woman to travel to every country on Earth to a man who trekked to Machu Picchu in a wheelchair, we met some incredible folks. And now, in our second season, we are back to introduce you to new people, new places, and new perspectives.

In our latest episode, Edwards chats with travel journalists and influencers Danielle Pointdujour and Travis Levius to talk about Black luxury travel and what it means to travel while Black.

"As far as Black luxury, it means freedom. It means stepping into places that people don't expect us to be. It means debunking stereotypes. It means relaxation," Pointdujour says. "We're always thought of as people that have to be working and constantly doing things and constantly on the move, we're still slaves in our minds to some degree, we have to be working, we have to be moving, we don't know how to relax. So when I see Black Luxury, I love to see a black woman luxuriating by a pool with her Christian Dior bag, living her best life."

Levius couldn't agree more, adding, "Black Travel is reclaiming what's ours. There's this blanket perception that we don't belong in these places, we can't afford these places. And so you still get stares… that you walk into a hotel and maybe they think you're part of the staff, or maybe you get funny looks like, 'oh, what do they do for a living, I've never seen people like them?' Kind of just discrediting that you belong there. So I think the power numbers of seeing that now on people's social media feeds of women just doing the most and the best way in Turkey and in Bali and just the most beautiful places on earth and Black Kings as well. It's just us, again, reaffirming our stance in the world and that we belong. And I think the images are just so powerful. When we continue that, then we can change the perception of who we are and what we can access and normalize it. It's really about normalizing our own place in the world."

Hear more from Pointdujour and Levius on Let's Go Together, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Player.FM, and everywhere podcasts are available.