How TikTok is helping Black solo travellers stay safe while travelling abroad

Alea Simone arrived at the airport with her purple suitcase in hand. She was filled with nerves. She had just quit her job and sold all of her furniture, so it would be hard to turn back. But when she saw the numbers 1-1-1 on the flight information board, she knew she was making the right decision. 

“Those are my numbers,” said Simone. 

The ‘Angel Number’ 1-1-1 is said to be linked to new beginnings and that’s exactly what that flight marked for Simone. 

It was in 2019 when Simone began to feel her life was unfulfilling. She had just turned 30 and realized she really did not enjoy her job in health and human services. She had an interest in travelling, so when she discovered a YouTuber called Lost Leblanc, she realized the idea of leaving her job to travel full-time was not far-fetched. 

“He quit his job, but he only had $5,000, and he started travelling (though) Asia for six months, and I was like, ‘wait, really? You’re telling me that people are quitting their jobs with $5,000? And they’re travelling for six months?’” said Simone. 

Coincidentally, when her father passed, she received a small death benefit of exactly $5,000. Simone flew to London, travelled around the rest of Europe for two months and then to Asia for another two months. 

In February 2020, she started a website for travel blogging. A month later, the pandemic hit and shut everything down.  “I felt like such an idiot,” said Simone. 

She found herself back feeling bored and unfulfilled. To help her pass the time, her partner suggested in January 2021 to download an app called TikTok. Four months later, she started producing travel content. 

She noticed that although Instagram had an established Black travel community, TikTok did not. Her partner found a TikTok made by a Black man outlining the places he felt were safe for travel and told her, “You need to do this’.” Simone did exactly that. 

“Nobody was on TikTok, and I was like, ‘You guys, you have to get on TikTok’. I was trying to tell everyone to get on TikTok, we’re not there! I was like, there’s no Black people making content!” said Simone. 

Fast-forward to 2022, Simone now works as a full-time travel content creator. She has amassed a following of nearly 600-thousand followers on TikTok. Her series, “Places I’ve felt safe travelling to as a Black woman” has millions of views and over two million likes. The space, which sat largely unoccupied at the time Simone began making content, is now filled with TikToks from dozens of Black creators. The hashtag #BlackSoloTraveller on TikTok now has 9.8 million tags, and the hashtag #BlackWomenTravel has over 43.5 million tags. 

TikTok has provided an easily accessible platform where Simone and other content creators can talk about their experiences, inform each other about the best and worst places to travel while being Black, and help keep the community safe while travelling. 

Racism and Inequity Face by Black Travellers

African Americans/Black people are one of the fastest growing tourist groups, according to a 2018 study by the Journal of Travel Research. Yet, it is one that faces the most discrimination. 

Simone remembers experiencing inequitable treatment when she was travelling through the south of France with another solo traveller, a white woman from Quebec.

They encountered a couple who began to complain in French about the two women. When Simone asked her fellow traveller what they were saying, she refused to translate what were severely racist comments about Simone. 

That wouldn’t surprise Lena Sow, who documents her travels on a TikTok series, ‘Travelling as a Black woman’.

“As I’ve gotten older, my tolerance for this type of treatment has decreased, so I’m even more aware of mistreatment,” said Sow. “My sister and I were treated so terribly in Italy in 2019. It’s such a helpless feeling because race is something that you can’t change and racism is such a senseless type of hate. We were treated with such hatred and disdain for simply existing as Black women.” 

Goal of the Black Traveller Community on TikTok 

According to a 2017 study (external link) , 80 per cent of Black millennial travellers said they were “more likely to plan a trip somewhere they believe will be accepting of their race or ethnicity.” 

Sow said part of her travel preparations has been to seek out Black women’s experiences of traveling.

“Even though I understand that experiences vary widely from person to person, I really value hearing from women who look like me who have been there,” said Sow. 

“No matter what their experience was, I just liked having a better idea of what I could be getting myself into. Because of this, I figured that I should start making that same type of content that I always found myself looking for.” 

Similarly, Simone believes that people consuming her content should take her experiences with a grain of salt since everyone's individual experiences differ. She does not want to discourage Black travellers but rather simply share her personal experience. 

When she hears other Black content creators talk about their bad experiences in a particular country, she treats it more like a heads-up rather than a write-off and feels her followers should too. 

Joel Duff, a third-year criminology student at Wilfred Laurier University, says he first stumbled upon the Black traveller community on TikTok while planning his first solo trip out of North America. 

“I did a lot of research through social media by going on my explore page, and I just started diving in, it was kind of like a rabbit hole. Once you find one, you find all the others,” said Duff. 

Duff doesn’t let personal testimonies discourage him but finds it helpful to know what he could expect. 

“I followed other Black influencers and saw what their opinions are on places and what their experiences were, but I always want to experience it for myself.” 

Nuances in Treatment within the Black Community 

While each Black individual's experience differs when travelling, there are other factors that can influence how they are treated, such as colourism and sexism. 

“Traveling solo as a woman is not always easy, and adding being a Black woman on top of that is a lot,” said Sow. 

“As a dark-skin Black woman, I know that I will face some sort of discrimination in most places I visit.” 

Duff added that while he does face challenges travelling while Black, he has the privilege of being a man, which can lessen the amount of adversity he faces. 

“If I was a woman, I’d definitely have a different experience. They probably would have been like catcalled, or sexually harassed or even kidnapped,” said Duff. 

Future of the Community

For both Simone and Sow, the pros of solo travelling far outweigh the cons. They plan to continue to explore the world and provide knowledge for their community in the process. 

“I always tell people when you’re trying to live in your truth, the universe will literally move things out the way,” said Simone.

Sow is currently completing her PhD at Cornell University and has the goal of visiting every country. Simone plans to continue working as a full-time travel content creator and will be hosting a tour in Egypt this upcoming March.