Meet the Women Advocating for More Diverse Perspectives in Travel Media: Women Who Travel Podcast

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“We've all vented to each other with frustration over the years, seeing that there was this resistance to expanding people's world views,” says Sarah Khan, editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Traveler Middle East, in this week's Women Who Travel episode. But last fall, Sarah—alongside branding consultant Paula Franklin, cofounder and editorial director of Fathom Jeralyn Gerba, partner at Xhibition PR Nestor Lara Baeza, and CEO of the Africa Tourism Association Naledi Khabo—launched Travel Is Better in Color, an effort to diversify the viewpoints shared by the travel industry. An Instagram and newsletter, Travel Is Better in Color highlights English-language travel writers, photographers, videographers, and more to showcase the stories being told and the work the industry can be doing to share broader perspectives on traveling today. 

“These stories have existed, these voices have existed,” says Naledi. “It was just a question of amplification, or identification and amplification. And I think that we were looking to do that and to build the level of awareness.”

This week, we're joined by Sarah, Naledi, and Paula to talk about their own experiences in the travel space, the impetus for Travel Is Better in Color, and how the travel industry and publications can champion a diverse mix of storytelling long term.

Thanks to Paula, Naledi, and Sarah for joining us and thanks, as always, to Brett Fuchs for engineering and mixing this episode. As a reminder, you can listen to new episodes of Women Who Travel on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, every Wednesday.

Read a full transcription below.

Meredith Carey: Hi, everyone. And welcome to Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condé Nast Traveler. I'm Meredith Carey. And with me as always is my co-host, Lale Arikoglu.

Lale Arikoglu: Hello.

MC: This week we're talking to three of the five founders of Travel is Better in Color, a group dedicated to amplifying the diverse experiences of travel writers, photographers, and content creators in an effort to show how featuring varied voices shares a fuller picture of the world we're traveling in today. Joining us are editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Traveler Middle East, Sarah Khan, branding consultant Paula Franklin and Naledi Khabo, CEO of the Africa Tourism Association. Thank you all for coming with us to chat.

Naledi Khabo: Thank you for having us.

Paula Franklin: Thank you.

LA: So how did each of you get involved in travel professionally, in the first place?

NK: Well, I can start because I sort of accidentally ended up there. My background is management consulting and digital marketing and I actually went into a consulting gig for an organization that deals with Africa and U.S. investment. And after doing some marketing work for them, they had acquired a tourism association and asked me to do some due diligence. And so that due diligence led to my current role and along the way, I rebranded the organization. And so I sort of fell into it by accident a few years ago. And then I met Paula, by chance, during that process. And that's sort of how I got involved with Travel is Better in Color.

MC: And, Paula, how did you get into travel?

PF: So, I have been traveling, one of those, my whole life. My mother is from Germany. So from a very young age, I was going back and forth between the U.S. and Germany. And my first job out of college was actually as the PR consultant at the German National Tourist Board. And that sort of opened up this world of travel PR and branding consulting that I didn't know existed, but immediately was hooked. And I worked at a few travel PR firms and then somehow ended up as the sort of Africa travel expert, in terms of PR, which is how I know Naledi. I know Sarah just generally from doing PR work, but yeah, I would say I've been traveling since I was like three months old and always loved it.

MC: And Sarah, we did an entire episode with you on your backstory. So if you're curious, you should go check it out. But cliff notes, how did you get into travel writing and your new role as editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Traveler Middle East?

Sarah Khan: So similar to Paula, I grew up traveling and living all over the world and then I've been a journalist now for 17 years. And my prior job before going freelance was at Travel and Leisure magazine. And that was when I started moving into the travel journalism space. Then I went freelance for the previous eight years, and now I have just joined this new role. So I would say probably it's been over a decade specializing in travel writing. And that's how I got to know Paula and Naledi, as well.

MC: So both as travelers and travel professionals, you guys have been in this universe for a combined impressive amount of decades. What do you feel like you've seen as the biggest failures or even just gaps in the industry and how travel has been represented in the past in articles and video and photography and just content across the board? What has been the thing you wished would happen for travel media?

PF: I think a lot of it is perspective, which is really how Travels is Better in Color started. I think India is maybe a good example. It's always sort of portrayed as hectic and it's dangerous and you want to spend as much time in the hotel as possible and don't eat the food. And, I think that that comes across in just a huge amount of writing about a place like India. And I think the reality is if you're from New York City or if you're from Lagos or Johannesburg or Tokyo, you're not going to have the same experience. And I don't think that we really allowed room for, “This could be hectic to some of you, but to someone else, this is normal. Like you're going to cross that street no problem.” The other thing New York City gets sometimes too, like “New York City is dangerous. Don't take the subway.” Well, I think it's one of the biggest mistakes and I hope something we can change the most going forward is just thinking about who is traveling and could they maybe have a different perception of this place from someone else.

NK: Coming into the industry—and specifically with Africa—I think I had some preconceptions in terms of what I would expect. And I think I was struck by the lack of diversity, especially as it pertains to messaging, to visual images in terms of marketing destinations. And the fact that Africa for the most part is positioned as a safari destination primarily. Like that's changing a bit over time, but I think those were the things that stuck out to me. But I also saw that as an opportunity to sort of expand the conversation and highlight other experiences and products across the continent. I see that changing—not as quickly as I would like—but it's happening.

SK: And I think travel journalism specifically just sort of evolved as a literary tradition from this colonial perspective of people traveling through colonized lands and sharing their points of view. And I think that hasn't really changed that much in the last several centuries. We're finally starting to see a little bit of a change against that now, but I think having been a travel writer specifically for as long as I have, I struggled with that a lot because that's all I ever saw as writing. So I even would fall into that myself, even though I do have a very different point of view and perspective. And I think in my earlier days and some of my earlier writing that I would probably cringe out when I look at, I think I was trying to filter the world through that same lens that I was used to seeing. And that was frustrating because I didn't. It felt reductive when I really started interrogating that a bit. And I think only in the last couple of years have I sort of had the freedom to really put myself into my writing or just try to open up and expand that world view and not just follow what I've seen done out there, because there weren't really many options to look to.

LA: Sarah, you said, you had the freedom to start to write about places and hone your voice in the way that felt right to you. How much do you think that is connected to having gone freelance as opposed to writing and working for a legacy publication or where there is a certain brand, a certain audience, a certain tone that you have to kind of strike?

SK: I think 100 percent it came when I went freelance and a lot of that has to do with different types of publications looking for different points of view. So I kind of knew that there were some places I wrote for that are all about these kinds of more unique and unconventional stories that I might want to tell. And I would go to them first. And then I would sort of know, like cherry picking, which ideas would be right for which editors. And I think along the way, it's been very liberating because I got to see which editors were really open to these ideas and were kind of willing to champion those ideas too. And that those relationships have meant all the world to me, for sure.

MC: Last year, when you guys first started talking about your experiences in the travel industry and what you wanted to see—kind of what Paula was talking about—what were those conversations like leading up to the official creation of Travel is Better in Color? And how did each of you bring your own experiences and what you wanted out of something like Travel is Better in Color to the table?

PF: I think for me, I am often the only Black person on the PR side in these spaces. And I think last year when there was this, I call it a racial reckoning—I know we have a lot of different terms for it—but it was very much the sort of, oh my goodness, we don't know any Black people and we don't know any people of color. How do we change the coverage? And like we've all been here. The Black travel movement has existed for decades. Maybe it didn't reach the covers of mainstream media, but this was not really anything new. And Naledi, Sarah, Nestor, Jeralyn, and I, we were all already in contact. So it was a bit more of what do we do?

I think for Naledi and me, as the Black members of the group, were getting a lot of phone calls from editors. Like, what do we need to change? What do we need to do? I'm like, you just need to go on your Rolodex, maybe hire a few people. It's not that complicated, but I think we were just having these conversations. And it was like, well, what do we do? And then, full disclosure was also what do we do without it completely taking over our work lives? Because we all have regular jobs.

And so we wanted to think of something that we could do to just highlight these voices that were already here and highlight these perspectives. So the idea was really just to create this Instagram and newsletter to say like, Hey, let's see, what is someone from Tokyo traveling to Europe for the first time? What do they feel? How are they saying it and just sort of changing perspectives. And then just a few phone calls in, we came up with a concept. We all really knew each other. We were in this space and we were frustrated, had been frustrated for years, but I think also realized that we did have the opportunity to really create something that people would look at.

NK: I think to Paula's point in terms of we've been here or the Black travel movement is not new. These stories have existed, these voices have existed. It was just a question of amplification, or identification and amplification. And I think that we were looking to do that and to build the level of awareness. So we're not like fielding these calls. It's like, just try a little. To Paula's point, open your Rolodex. Just like do a Google search. Like it's out there, it's there. So, A, it makes it easier, but then we're also celebrating these diverse voices that are telling diverse stories.

SK: And I think Paula's role in this is really instrumental, where she is the one that really rallied us and came up with the name and made us do this. But just as far as the timeline goes, this is something we've all in our independent silos, in our different aspects of the travel industry, have been trying to work towards. And we've all vented to each other with frustration over the years, seeing that there was this resistance to expanding people's world views. And I think we've all tried to do that in our own ways. And I know Paula has definitely had some stories with types of things she was pitching to editors that they weren't really responsive to. I don't know if you want to get into that in more detail—but I think this is something that didn't just come up last year. It was just something that we finally saw that the time was right, that people were really finally open to looking at the world differently and making different choices by who they hired and how they portrayed the world. And that's when Paula really mobilized us.

PF: I think the example that she's saying, I'll give you the very quick background. Naledi was involved in this. So 2019 was the Year of Return in Ghana, so 400 years from when the first slave ships arrived in the Americas. And Ghana, I think brilliant tourism campaign, like everyone from the diaspora come back this year, we'll have a big party at the end of the year, but come and see where you are from, I say loosely, but come see this legacy or this horrific past that we are all the descendant of. And I don't work for the Ghana Tourism Board. I just knew about it from my work in Africa and just sort of mentioned it in multiple editor meetings or just in emails and was really just met with, well, we're not ready for West Africa. I'm like, but it's a whole part of Africa. How are you not ready? And this is something that really affects America. It also goes to show that statement of “the Black travel movement has been here” because the only coverage I saw was actually in Condé Nast Traveler. There was a photo essay by a photographer, who I love, about Accra. And the New York Times had a beautiful story that Jacqueline Woodson wrote, where she went with her partner or wife and their children and wrote this amazing story, but that was in December. So that story would not have actually helped with tourism numbers. And I think—Naledi, correct me if I'm wrong—Ghana's tourism numbers were up by 400 percent or 500 percent.

NK: At minimum.

PF: Yeah. I mean, almost every Black celebrity I follow on social media was at Afrochella. Like we're going to find a way to get there. And when I was there, I was there in November and I went to the castles and on the coast and I was, as the PR person, to every Black person I was like, how'd you get here? How'd you find out about it? Who's your tour operator? How did you find them? And they were all with church groups or sorority groups, which I just found really eye opening that this sort of make a way, like, oh, we're going to get here for this year. And then, flash forward to 2021 or 2020, the same editors are calling me, like tell me more about Ghana. I'm like, that was 2019... Not that you shouldn't go—but this was very meaningful coverage before George Floyd. I'm happy that it's changing and that West Africa is getting coverage, but I really do wish that that had changed without last spring happening.

LA: That response of “we're not ready” is such a loaded term. How frequently do the three of you feel like you've come up against an editor or a publicist or someone within the travel industry who has come out with that line?

PF: Especially for Africa, I would say. There's a lot of “We have an Africa story for this year” and it’s like almost 54 countries.

NK: Right.

SK: “We're covering Zambia, so we wouldn't do Senegal.”

NK: Right, right. I don't work with editors as much as Paula and Sarah, but when we talk about it or even when I am having those conversations, it's very much like, oh, we're already doing X, Y, and Z. And I'm like, but that actually has nothing to do with what we're talking about. So they’re two totally different stories. It's like, Nope, we've checked the box and that's it. So it seems like that's definitely the approach to Paula's point, “We've done the Africa story for the year, moving on.”

SK: And then also often with the Africa story or even just many other parts of the world, it's only really validated—or it used to be only validated—if there were expats doing something there or some sort of more Western lens in that destination, which was also kind of frustrating. So it's like, if you're just talking about really cool people in Zanzibar, it's not the same as like a British fashion designer has now done something in Zanzibar. And I think that's something that I kind of came up against a lot with some of the regions that I cover.

PF: And I think just to go back to West Africa, there are—were, before COVID—I think, seven direct flights from the East Coast to West Africa every day. Like I grew up in Berlin, you can get to Dakar faster than you can get back from Berlin. So this idea that it's like some crazy place that is impossible to get to is a bit ridiculous. And I think also, just to piggyback on that, I think there's also that kind of story of, well, how do Black people travel? How do Muslim people travel? How do Asian people travel? Everyone kind of loves a cocktail or mocktail on a beach with an umbrella in it. There's not really… You want to feel welcomed. You don't want to be the only in a resort or be looked at strangely, but travel is sort of travel. And I don't know, you know, I'm glad we're moving away from it, but I don't really think that there are these vast differences in the way that different races travel.

MC: Naledi, at the beginning, you talked about how you felt like slowly conversations about Africa being only a safari destination have been shifting. And I feel like when you guys announced Travel is Better in Color existing, like there was definitely a large response—from the outside, at least—from the travel industry, celebrating your efforts and also having people identify and want to be involved in what you guys were doing. Did you feel like there was a shift at all after Travel is Better in Color launched last year? And was it what you expected?

NK: I definitely think that there's been a shift in terms of openness or... you are seeing a difference in the stories and the storytellers. I think even from a destination perspective, there's a diversification, even of the audiences they're trying to reach. So for Africa specifically, traditionally they're looking at the UK, Germany, and the U.S. markets, right? And so they're giving them what they think that they want and it's predominantly a white market. And so I think even in the case of Africa, there's been a shift there in terms of recognizing the power of more diverse audiences. The diaspora, for instance, and the spending power that they have and respecting that in a way that wasn't done before. So I see that from a marketing perspective from the destinations and I see that even from a media perspective, I do see, that there's been a shift in the stories and people are getting more opportunities. I don't know that it says as faster or as aggressive as maybe I would personally like, but there is a shift. People are getting more visibility. I don't know that they're getting like long-term roles or permanent roles, but I also don't know that that's actually desired either. I know Paula and I have had that conversation just in terms of editorial roles, because then you're sort of locked in and some writers like the ability to sort of move around and things like that. But I like the fact that I am seeing more diverse bylines more diverse stories, hen I go to a website or pick up a magazine.

PF: I have heard from a lot of the writers of color who I work with that they're able to really pitch more unique stories. I think one good example. There's a writer, Kristin Braswell who writes on all sort of things, but she did a story, I think it was in Travel and Leisure, an ode to Carnival because she goes to Carnival in Trinidad almost every year. And it was a sort of like pining to be able to go [story]. Because obviously it wasn't happening last year. I think stories like that of just sort of, it's not necessarily... I mean it is a Black story because a lot of Black people are going to Carnival. But I don't know that she would have had this story placed three years ago. And it's a brilliant story about one of the largest festivals in the world. And I don't know that she would have been given—I'm assuming here—but I don't know how much she would have been given that opportunity to write the story the way that she did.

I think another good example is Sarah Greaves-Gabbadon and Heather Greenwood Davis—a lot of names—they did a story for the TripAdvisor blog around Black History Month. It was all Black joy. So it was not this sort of, this is how Black people travel and numbers. It was just beautiful, joyful stories about Black people traveling. And I think those are some of the shifts that we're seeing that I think are a sign of change. I'm thinking stories like that, that people are really allowed to bring their perspectives in, in a new way.

SK: The other interesting thing that happened last year was this perfect storm of editors kind of waking up to needing diverse voices, but also the pandemic, which sort of limited people's ability to helicopter into destinations and write about them. Which might've been kind of the crutch that most editors relied on, sending their familiar writers to different parts of the world as opposed to using talent on the ground. And I think one of the things that we're doing with Travel is Better in Color is just kind of highlighting voices in English language media, around the world. And there's really robust English language travel writing happening in India, in South Africa, in Kenya, like different parts of the world. And we're trying to feature some of those writers as well. And I think a lot of editors are following our account and subscribing to our newsletter so we're hoping that it's just sort of opening their eyes to other talent that they can be commissioning in other parts of the world, even after the world is more open and you can actually go back to sending writers around.

LA: You know, you started this at a time when no one could travel and now travel is returning and a year has passed. How much do you think travel publications and editors and also just the industry as a whole are now remaining committed to the promises they made when Travel is Better in Color started? And are they remaining committed to those phone calls they made back last summer?

MC: The grimaces on everyone's faces kind of...

NK: Well...

MC: ...give away the answer there.

NK: You know what it is? I feel like it remains to be seen, right, to fully assess what was performative and what was real. I think we're well aware that there were a lot of performative initiatives or actions that people took in the heat of things. Whether we're talking about black squares or starting up these focus groups and things like that—also the focus groups weren't necessarily diverse, but I won't specify who did that. But, I think that everyone sort of initiated all of these activities and now we're getting a chance to evaluate over a year later who really made changes. Who really brought on new individuals to their platforms? Who really changed their marketing messages and the like? And so I think that for me, the answer is the jury is still out. I'm grimacing because I do think that a lot of what has taken place was performative.

PF: And I think, for me, I think the mastheads are very telling. So I think even though we're seeing more articles, by diverse voices and just more attention being paid to who is telling the story and if they should be telling this story, I think that that is definitely something that I think publications and editors are taking seriously. And I know that the masthead conversation is complicated because travel magazines are not exactly swimming in dollars just right now after a year and a half of not traveling. And I know that adds to the complication, but I think the fact that you really still don't have representation of races really at all at the larger travel brands is still telling. I think also, the larger tour operators who are connected to the travel brands, there's also a deep lack of diversity there. There's also not a lot of diversity in travel PR. So I think someone has to really get into these circles to make lasting change. But I do love to see the stories coming out in the magazines. I would just love to see that masthead shift a little bit.

SK: I think that masthead shift, like Paula was saying, it's going to take a while for various reasons. But I think we also don't want editors and publications to be like, “All right, good, we got our one person and that's going to be our brown people whisperer who will kind of tell everything we need to know.” That's a lot of responsibility to put on one person. So it should be a long-term goal to really make the mastheads more reflective of the community that we're living in and speaking to.

And I think the other thing, having been a freelance writer for so long, I know that editors often... I don't want to say it's a laziness thing, I've actually always been very empathetic to this where everybody is really strapped for time and doesn't really have the time or the resources to really be out there researching multiple writers and all that. And you sort of end up relying on the same writers over and over. And I mean, I benefited from this as a freelancer. I feel like I was kind of the go-to person for a lot of Southern Africa and India stories, for a lot of editors. So obviously, I've been on that side of it. But I think now we're seeing editors have been diversifying a bit, but then it also kind of ends up being the same old voices again and again, too. So I think it's just, they need to kind of see it as not like, okay, we've identified our three new Black and brown writers and that's it, we're just going to give them everything now. It needs to just be this constant effort to find new voices, especially in different countries that aren't really covered that well or that responsibly, and making sure that they're really taking that effort repeatedly and not just kind of like a one-off like “I've added a few more writers to my stable and that's that.”

MC: So speaking of writers, photographers that you guys think are really great. We always love ending our episodes, shouting out women that are doing amazing things in travel. Are there any Travel is Better in Color folks—or just general amazing women out in the travel space—that you think everyone should be reading or following or watching right now?

NK: Well, I know Paula named...

PF: You're going to steal mine?

NK: I sure am because you named some of them already, so that's why I went first. Some of my favorites like Kristin Braswell, Sarah Greaves-Gabbadon, Heather Greenwood Davis, Mimi Aborowa who publishes the Irin Journal, which really focuses on African cities. Now you can pick it up Paula. Sorry.

PF: I'm actually going to go sort of travel adjacent because, as I know that the two of you know, I love that sort of intersection of travel and sustainability and philanthropy, and there's an oceanographer named Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and she wrote this book, All We Can Save. As people get smarter about conservation and about conservation issues globally, I think there's a real understanding of Indigenous rights in conservation areas. And you can't just have these Europeans coming in and being like, “I like that elephant and I'm going to save it,” and that we need to get a lot deeper than that. And a lot of the work that she does is about community rights in areas on coastlines globally. And I think just this idea of, yes, there's like a lovely resort on an island where you want to stay in, but who's conserving this coastline? Who owns these coastlines? And people who've lived here for thousands of years, what is their degree of ownership of these coastlines? And I think, as we become smarter, more conscious travelers, I think that that is a hugely important concept. And I just love her. Just an incredibly intelligent woman.

I think the other one, the Instagram handle is @IHartEricka. They are a racially conscious sex educator, but they travel a lot. And I just find this sort of courageousness of them just living this joy. They'll travel, there'll be remarks about people saying things or just sort of negative things they're coming up against, but like the joy of this account. And they just took a cross-country road trip and it was sort of like down to Nashville and over and they made it to California. And I love seeing travel by people who are not in the travel industry. And I love the Instagram—just to see them out there is brilliant.

MC: Amazing. We've had Ayana on the podcast before and she actually has her own podcast called How to Save a Planet that is very good. And yes, Ericka Hart is great, definitely an Instagram follow. Sarah, how about you?

SK: Well, I will say, I think actually Sarah Greaves—not to just copy Naledi and Paula, I do love her work—just because the Caribbean is actually an area I never really thought about much ever, even as a traveler. I never really went there much. And I feel like I've just learned so much in the last year following her.

But I think the other important thing is photography. How we cover the world from a writing perspective is important, but then how the gaze that we turn on other people in communities and cultures [is also important]. And I think Lola Akinmade [Åkerström], in Sweden—she's both a writer and a photographer—I just love her work. And she also has a novel coming out. Very talented woman.

And the other newsletter that I love is Unpacking Media Bias. It's by these British travel writers Meera Dattani and Shivani Ashoka and I think that's really important because it turns a lens on a lot of these questions and issues and really interrogates what we're doing when we're covering the world the way we are. And I think that's a really important one that everyone should be following.

MC: Amazing. And if people want to keep up with each of you on the internet, where can they find you online?

NK: I'm @Naledi on Instagram and Twitter and that's N-A-L-E-D-I, it's just my first name.

PF: I am only on Instagram, at least actively. @Pdpfranklin, very boring because I haven't traveled to many places [recently], but hopefully that will change soon.

SK: And I am @Bysarahkhan. B-Y-S-A-R-A-H-K-H-A-N. Pretty much anywhere that social media exists. So Instagram and Twitter are the ones I actually use, so.

MC: And you can find Travel is Better in Color also on Instagram at @Travelisbetterincolor. You can find me @Ohheytheremere.

LA: And me @LaleHannah.

MC: Be sure to follow Women Who Travel on Instagram @Womenwhotravel and sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter. All of that and links to everything and everyone that we talked about in today's episode will be in the show notes. So be sure to check them out. Thank you three so much for joining us and we'll talk to everyone else next week.