The New Jet-Setters

THE travel industry is getting a boost from a new source: black economic power. Badgered by both legal and social barriers in the past, most blacks rarely wandered far from home. Those barriers are falling rapidly now--not only in the U.S. but in many countries round the world. As a result, airlines in the past several months have begun tying up with established black tour operators. Black newspapers, magazines and radio stations are being deluged with travel advertisements. A San Francisco tour operator, Bob Hayes, has written The Black American Travel Guide (Straight Arrow Books; $6.95), and 4,000 copies have been sold since it was published nine months ago. Conservative estimates are that black tourists this year will spend $800 million, and by next year $1 billion, at airline ticket counters, on trains and buses and in hotels and restaurants.

Schoolteachers, college professors, doctors, lawyers and executives make up the bulk of the black tourist market. But a large number of black travelers are as likely to be bus drivers, waitresses or assembly-line workers. Many blacks now have better-paying jobs and often, as in millions of white families, both husband and wife work. The Census Bureau reported in 1970 that one-quarter of all U.S. black families earned more than $10,000 annually and that the black median income increased 50% during the 1960s, compared with only a 35% increase for whites. Banks and other loan agencies have made it easier for blacks to borrow money for vacations. "And I jokingly tell some of them that a trip is the only thing that can't be repossessed," quips Freddye Henderson, operator of Atlanta-based Henderson Travel Service, one of the largest black travel agencies.

In almost every major city there is now a travel agency specializing in black tour packages. Most of them are run by experienced black travelers, such as Earl Jackson, a former New York City policeman who heads I.G.T. Travel in Queens; Louis Larkins of the Apollo Travel Agency in Chicago; Charles North of North Travel in Miami; and Alberto De Voe of De Voe Travel Service in Los Angeles. The agents not only know where blacks like to visit, but, says Hillarie Jones of Charm Travel, which has offices in Oakland and San Francisco, "we wouldn't recommend a small independent hotel unless we had tried it ourselves. They don't turn away black travelers, but often they might give them a small room with no view." The travel agents have found that blacks get good rooms at the hotels and motor inns operated by the major chains, such as the Hiltons and Holiday Inns.

Familiar U.S. vacation spots like Las Vegas and Disneyland are getting their share of the new tourists, but traveling abroad is becoming the more fashionable vacation. The InterAmerican Travel Agents Society estimates that 16% of all U.S. travelers going abroad this year will be blacks, up from 5% in 1965. Canada and countries where blacks are established government leaders, such as Jamaica and Trinidad, are already favorite black vacation destinations. This year more U.S. blacks than ever will visit African countries. An increasing number of black travelers are also jetting to such varied places as Japan, Hong Kong, Spain, France and Great Britain. South Africa and Rhodesia, split by racial turmoil at home, are about the only countries that still do not want these tourists.

Luau with Soul. More and more tour operators are tailoring their attractions for blacks. In Hawaii a typical luau staged for them includes soul music on ukuleles, and chitlins and black-eyed peas served along with suckling pig. Last month, TWA began offering a black-oriented tour program billed as the Sights, Sounds and Soul of Europe. It touches down in London, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Typically, a day in London would include a tour of non-white communities, a side trip to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Shakespeare's Othello or other plays, and an evening of nightclubbing. The travelers are taken to African museums and nightclubs and invited to teas and smorgasbords at which local blacks are the hosts. Pan American has begun selling black-oriented tours to Africa and the Caribbean; American Airlines is also aiming at the Caribbean, while Western is promoting black tours to Acapulco. At American, Sales Development Director George Jackson has come up with a special "island vacations" program for blacks in Manhattan: 10-c- round trip to Staten Island, 70-c- to Long Island and $168 to the Virgin Islands.

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