Brazil’s Afrotourism push is better late than never

inclusive country where inequality runs deep.

Consider that in the U.S. alone, Black consumers spent an estimated $109 billion on travel in 2019, the most recent research available, representing 13% of the country’s leisure market, according to global market research firm MMGY Global. And in 2023, U.S. tourists – Brazil’s most important long-haul market – spent $6.9 billion, surpassing the prior record of $6.8 billion in tourism revenue in 2014, when the country hosted the FIFA World Cup.

Marcelo Freixo, president of Brazil’s tourism board Embratur, said in January that the emerging travel sector stands to be a

“big business” that can generate jobs and income and “empower Black entrepreneurs,” even if specifics are still fuzzy. Embratur has only just begun researching possible visitor numbers and revenue impact for those seeking out Brazil’s African heritage. But for a country where 56% of people identify as Black and where its most wellknown elements, including samba and carnival, are rooted in its AfroBrazilian heritage, late is better than never.

“The Brazilian government has realized it can attract more tourists when they sell Brazil through its Black culture,” says Guilherme Soares Dias, a journalist and founder of Guia Negro, an Afrotourismfocused platform that also sells Black heritage tours in Brazil.

Multiple efforts are now underway to expand Brazil’s Black heritage experiences under the auspices of a newly created government organization called Rotas Negras (“Black Routes”). Its coordinator, Tania Neres, argues that supervision from a federal level will ensure Afro and Indigenous tourism will no longer be pushed aside.

“People who have been trying to promote Afrotourism routes have had to deal with pushback for many years,” she explains, citing racism. There’s the prior government’s preference for marketing to white American or European tourists, with the notion that they would spend more.

Among Rotas Negras’ tasks is to map all of Brazil’s Black heritage tour offerings, entrepreneurs and businesses, which will also be added to existing travel booking app Diaspora Black, and to create a strategic plan for promoting Afro-Brazilian tourism overseas. A partnership with Airbnb Inc. to boost Afrotourism in Rio kicked off in December, and the tourism board campaign in February featured a Black female enjoying Afrotourism destinations in Brazil.

Separately, Embratur plans to create Afro-Brazilian tour itineraries in São Paulo, Alagoas, Maranhão, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, Neres says, which will be available to travelers by the end of the year. A parallel benefit: Black Brazilians have been more openly embracing their history and identity in recent years and booking tours to learn what they didn’t in school.

Holder says she found the Rio Little Africa tour extremely moving; it reminded her of elementary school visits to Jamestown, where slavery began in the U.S. “It finally clicked that the Africans who were in the U.S. came from Brazil … they landed in Jamestown settlement.”

Gavin Huntley-Fenner, a 59-year-old African American scientist based in California, was intent on incorporating Afro-Brazilian history into his luxury cruise to the Amazon River in February, with stops in Rio and Salvador. His first trip to Brazil was 30 years ago while on business in São Paolo.

Finding a Black guide in Rio online proved easier for him than for Salvador, despite its largely Black population.

He eventually got connected to Nilzete Santos, founder of Afrotours. A day of exploration in Salvador started with an introduction to candomblé, an enduring syncretic religion practiced in slavery times; a tour of hilltop-dwellingsturned-shrines at Ile Axe, where runaway enslaved Africans took refuge; and history at a Black-founded bank, which was created to help enslaved people buy their way out.

“It was really inspiring,” says Huntley-Fenner. “In a way it’s a lot like the United States’ Black history, where on one hand it’s horrible and on the other hand, Black people have played a role in moving the country forward from its roots.”