Green Book Global Launches New Road Trip Planner For Black Travelers

Two years ago, I wrote a Forbes story about the groundbreaking launch of Green Book Global, the first and only Black travel booking and review platform. It was named after The Negro Motorist Green Book, which guided and aided African Americans as they traveled travel through Jim Crow America between 1936 and 1966. More than an homage to that book, Green Book Global is a website and modern-day interactive guide designed to aid Black travelers in the 21^st century.

Now, they’ve launched a new Road Trip Planner tool, a web application designed to assist Black travelers in planning safer, more enjoyable road trips across the United States by leveraging community-driven insights and data.

“Our mission has always been to empower Black travelers with information that fosters a safer and more inclusive travel environment,” said Lawrence Phillips, Founder and CEO of Green Book Global. “With the Road Trip Planner, we are turning the collective experiences of our community into a powerful tool that maps out the best routes and highlights areas to avoid based on historical and recent data. This is more than a planning tool. It’s a new layer of security for our community.”

Phillips explains that Green Book Global utilizes thousands of user-generated reviews from Black travelers to help determine the best routes for Driving While Black and enable users to chart routes that avoid areas with a history of being unwelcoming or unsafe.

“Cities are rated on a five-star scale by our community for what it’s like Traveling While Black and cities receive an overall score,” he explains. Green represents the safest and most welcoming destination, yellow indicates average, and red means it needs improvement. It indicates a city where Black travelers generally have not felt safe or welcome, and it may even signify a former sundown town.”

A sundown town, Phillips explains, is a “town that prohibited non-whites from living or staying there after dark. They were most prevalent in the Jim Crow era, and although most think they were only in the South, a vast amount are found all over the USA, especially in the Midwest. In some cases, there were official ordinances to keep Black people out, while in others, it was an unwritten rule. In either case, if violated, it could lead to bodily harm, arrest or worse.”

Green Book Global’s mission, Phillips says, is to increase confidence and reduce the anxiety of Black travelers so they can confidently explore the world. Some of the most welcoming destinations in the USA for Black travelers, according to data from Green Book Global, are Atlanta, Houston, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, and Chicago. There’s also an International Destination Discovery Tool, which has recommendations for places as diverse as Kenya, Slovenia and Argentina.

“We don’t make recommendations on whether or not you should visit a destination,” Phillips adds. “Our goal is to provide information so that Black travelers can make that very personal decision for themselves about where they want to go. We simply want you to be aware of other Black travelers’ experiences and, if you do visit, to report back your experience to the community in the form of a destination review.”

Phillips notes that the new Planner tool allows motorists to click “Avoid City” to skip a sundown town and reroute you. On the other hand, Phillips’ research has also yielded surprises.

“Portland, Maine, was a big surprise,” Phillips says. “Although Maine is one of the whitest states in America, with a Black population of almost 2%, the city of Portland is nearly 10% Black. It was amazing. Great food, plenty of activities, and a welcoming atmosphere.”

For more information, visit Green Book Global.

This post was originally published on here