How it all began
Our Story
In October 2015, our founder Stefan Grant experienced discrimination and racism while renting an Airbnb in Atlanta. The next door neighbors saw a bunch of Black youth in the house, assumed they were robbing the place, and called the police for the crime of #AirbnbWhileBlack. The police arrived with their guns drawn, looking for robbers. All they found was a house full of creatives preparing to make breakfast. Once the officers realized there were no actual crimes in progress, our founder and the officers took a selfie together to document the moment. The selfie that started it all.
That photograph went viral around the world and shined a light on a very serious problem.
Our philosophy
Noirbnb was created to serve Black travelers and others who want to travel without the worry of being discriminated against.
We’re building a community of hosts, adventurers, and property owners who want to help make the world a better, more welcoming place.
What Stefan realized after his Airbnb experience was that what happened to him and his friends wasn’t an isolated case. In fact, it was far from it. There are major issues with racism and discrimination when it comes to short-term/vacation rentals. This sparked the concept of Noirbnb.
The original idea for Noirbnb was to be a community within Airbnb’s already existing community. A place where Black Travelers and non-discriminatory Hosts could connect with each other in a safe and respectful way.
After months of deliberation with Airbnb to see if a partnership was possible, our founder made the decision to start Noirbnb independently.
Our core values revolve around respect, quality, service, excellence, and safety. It’s those principles that guide the company, internally and externally.
Our Team
FAQ
Most frequent questions and answers
Noirbnb is a short-term rental community and concierge service that connects guests with hosts as well as curating incredible adventures for travelers.
Our founder Stefan met with Airbnb in November 2015 to discuss the idea of Noirbnb and a possible partnership, in hopes of addressing their issues with discrimination. They underestimated the market necessity to cater to Black travelers and opted not to partner with us to build this concept, so we decided to do it ourselves.
Our mobile app is currently in development, but we designed our current website with fully responsive functionality for a proper user experience while on mobile devices.
Noirbnb is a company that is founded on the principles of creating a welcoming environment where all people can feel safe and comfortable while traveling around the world, regardless of their race, gender, religion, or anything else.
Noirbnb is available internationally and our community is open to people from all over the world.
Our company is founded by Black travelers for the Black travel experience but, Noirbnb is open for all people to use and join in the Black travel experience.
Noirbnb will have a variety of hosts of all races, cultures, and ethnicities. Our main goal is to create a travel accommodations platform where discrimination is a thing of the past.
We are currently accepting new hosts and handling bookings and we will also be rolling out new features, functionalities, and updates to improve the experience while using Noirbnb.