As an English-speaking Indian-American in Paris, I’ve never exactly felt welcomed with open arms. Until July 2021.
By then, French borders had been closed to U.S. passport holders for more than a year. The country had been in and out of various lockdowns and curfews, once lively hotels had become eerily quiet and Parisians were learning to embrace staycations.
I walked into the high-end La Samaritaine department store wearing sneakers and a sleeveless dress on a hot summer day. I expected judgment for my wardrobe choices and to be snubbed like Julia Roberts when she walked into that Rodeo Drive boutique in Pretty Woman. Instead I was offered champagne and invited to try $50,000 in diamonds in a private suite larger than the average Manhattan studio apartment.
It was an eye-opening experience to have my power as a consumer acknowledged like that. It’s something the travel industry has yet to do, especially when it comes to luxury travel and travelers of color.
Black travelers in the U.S. alone spent nearly $130 billion on travel in 2019, according to a survey from MMGY Global and the Black Travel Alliance. Hispanic travelers spent nearly $114 billion on travel that year while Asian travelers spent nearly $83 billion, according to MMGY. That’s more than $330 billion in combined spending by travelers of color — a lot of money for travel brands to leave on the table, especially nowadays.
Travel has been my largest category of leisure spending for years, and my willingness to splurge on experiences that are worth it has only grown as my paychecks have.
One way for travel to come out of the pandemic thriving is by recognizing travelers of color they’ve overlooked for too long as the valuable customers we are. That’s going to take more than a generic commitment to diversity, a few social media posts and black squares on profiles. It may require coming to terms with uncomfortable history, thinking about broader cultural perspectives, and recolorizing the white-washed stories told to visitors.
Travelers are thinking more critically about the places we go, the way we experience these places and who we allow to take us there. Authenticity, accuracy and inclusion are more important than ever.
Representation also makes a difference. Travelers of color want to see people who look like them in travel advertising, and they expect the environments they encounter to resemble what they see. I notice when I see Indian-Americans on TV, in movies, and in advertising.
More than half of the Black travelers surveyed by MMGY said representation in advertising is a key part of their travel decision making, and MMGY found representation of Black people in ads made Black travelers more likely to visit a destination.
It’s common sense that should be a bigger priority than it is.
I’ve walked into American luxury retailers dressed better than I was in Paris but never had my spending power respected the way it was at La Samaritaine. Usually, I have to work to make myself seen by high-end retailers. I expected things would change as I got older and my bank balances grew, but that never happened.
I certainly didn’t expect it to happen at Paris’s fanciest department store, a 36,000-square-foot mecca of luxury retail that just got a $900 million makeover by its owner LVMH, the owner of luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Givenchy and Veuve Clicquot.
The pieces I chose to try — a $25,500 necklace and pair of $19,500 earrings — cost enough that the sales clerk had to call a security guard to remove them from their cases. But instead of watching me like a hawk as I tried on the pieces, he just stood at the door, giving me a sliver of hope about the future for travelers of color.
I shouldn’t step off a luxury cruise ship and be directed to the crew discount section at the port liquor store. Other passengers of color shouldn’t be so easily mistaken for crewmembers.
Maybe, just maybe, one day we won’t.
👋🏾 From a luxury rail car that was also for sale at La Samaritaine
