My WITS Travel Creator Summit Experience was Unexpected | Here's What It Was Really Like

I enjoyed my first time attending the WITS Travel Creator Summit in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was also my first time speaking as the keynote main stage speaker. In this video, I will be sharing about my experience networking, attending, speaking on a stage, and being a Black disabled Muslim woman, what it was like with the accommodations and from a disability point of view. So I am Zaakirah, and I am a brand strategist, travel creator, and I'm blind in one eye as a result of a childhood eye cancer survivor. I am also hard of hearing, so I lost my hearing a little bit due to the radiation treatment. So I, Really enjoyed my time being at the WITS Travel Creators Summit. Having been traveling for a long time, using social media to tell my story for a very long time, it's so rare to be in a room with other women and gender-diverse advocates and allies and to understand the ever-changing content creation industry. I got to just not only be an attendee, but I also got to speak. And it was my first time having a major keynote session, and I got to speak to anywhere between 200 and 500 women and gender-diverse individuals, and it was an amazing experience. How many of you, raise your hand, if you've been to more than 5 countries?

Okay, okay.

I see some people like, I want to get there too. Next question, how many of you have seen someone in a wheelchair at this event? Okay, good, good. You're paying attention. Okay, and my last question for you is, how many of you have seen someone with a hearing aid or know someone with a hearing loss? That's not bad, that's not bad. I was expecting less hands because that's kind of invisible, right? And that's what we're going to talk about, how you can make sure your content is more accessible for those with disabilities that you can't see. So I am Zaakirah, and if you have a hard time remembering it, think of hips don't lie, Zaakirah, Zaakirah. And was I nervous? No, because I've been blessed with the opportunity back in 2024 to do a TEDx talk. When I applied, I looked for the speaker application and paid attention to the deadline. And once I got accepted, I was so excited, but they specifically said, we want you to do exactly what you did on TEDx stage, but let's talk about the accessible content. So that's exactly what I did. I talked about content, how come You're not using captions in your videos. How come you're not describing either what you look like or what people are supposed to be looking at for those who cannot see or cannot hear that well? And how to make sure that you're more empathetic when you are traveling. Pay attention to more ramps, whether a place has ramps and stairs or work an elevator or not. Pay attention to noise levels at the places that you go to. How can you be more empathetic when you are traveling and when you're making your travel content? It was really amazing. The team was very accommodating. From the start, we had a WhatsApp group with everybody's numbers, so I had everybody's number. Everybody was super helpful with helping each other to get content. Nowadays we have amazing tripod stands and the cameras like the one I'm using right now where it can automatically track you. But sometimes you need a good old, here, can you please hold my phone and grab this video of me walking or looking back? So it was amazing to be in a space where everyone is just really open and welcoming because we know how hard this industry can be. So from the start, because I had access to the team, Any question that I had was addressed. It was also one of the few conferences that paid their speakers. Yeah, most conferences, I've been to a lot of conferences, I've spoken at a lot of conferences, and not a lot of them do that. So I left WITS feeling seen, welcomed, and valued. It was also great research for me to understand how I can now combine all of my loves. My love of traveling, I've been to over 15 countries and half of the United States at the time of this video. And I also have a knack for teaching people how to tell their stories. And now I can combine it with advocating for those who have disabilities that are in worse condition than me, but they still want to travel, they still want to capture content. And the most amazing part is that this specific conference, they always travel to a specific place. And when they travel, they make sure to have fam trips or familiarization trips. to go to see certain places. And so the beautiful thing is that I grew up in the city where the conference was, so I didn't do too many familiarization trips, but it was so fun to hear some of the ladies when we're sitting around in the hotel lobby and bumping into each other after lunch and stuff, hearing them be so fascinated about certain things. And if they hadn't gotten to check out certain things, I was encouraging them to do so. I probably could have gotten back more up-to-date content because my photos are from the convenience stores that are printed in the darkroom days, right? But I know that I'll be back because I was also inspired to find some other way to tell more of my dad's story. I realized that where my dad grew up, a place called Etiwah, Tennessee, I'll show you and link a video where I went to drive through. I had an action camera with me, put it on the dashboard of the car, and captured just driving through Etiwah, Tennessee, Etiwah and Athens, Tennessee, which is where my daddy's from. But I'm like, I want to come back, work out a partnership of a different way with Visit Chattanooga, for example, or work something out since Etowah and Athens don't exactly have a tourism organization yet, and come back and tell a different story. I can assure that I enjoyed the time of attending the Bessie Smith Cultural Center, which predominantly was music and Chattanooga history.

Whatever, you know.

Yeah.

Thank you for having us. We're excited to have you. We're grateful to be here.

So grateful.

Entertain us with those questions and we'll entertain you with whatever answers we can find.

The 10 people who founded this museum wanted to ensure that, uh, we captured, presented, and then So anyone who is super close to me knows that I love Usher, Raymond the singer, and it was so exciting to see That his Super Bowl skates and jackets and helmets and awards are actually in that museum 'cause he grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And that's how I found out about him. We were living in Chattanooga, Tennessee when I heard his song, You Remind Me, on the radio for the first time. So I'm a music lover, and it was so exciting also to see Kane Brown, who is also one of the few Black country artists of the 21st century, and to see his awards performances that he got to do during the pandemic between the years of 2020 and 2022. And it was also amazing to attend an ice cream social, an ice cream meetup, to meet some people from the Black Travel Alliance in person. Black Travel Alliance has been around since 2020, but technically it starts way before that because there's a lot of travel groups, maybe like Facebook groups, that started off helping each other to travel and start travel content. And then a lot of them branched off into their own private communities. But at the core of it all, we're all very supportive of one another. So we were so excited to attend the ice cream social, and I went to Scoop-A-Bound and find out Scoopalicious in Chattanooga.

Hi. Hello. Hi. How are you?

And eat. So the speakers had a chance to get a networking event. Be at the Hotel Chalet, which is actually— it used to be a train depot, train station, and they turned it into a hotel. So you can actually sleep in a train car. There's the area called Choo-Choo, and so now it's like broken down into different stores. So I got to have coffee and sandwiches at Frothy Monkey. Asian food place called Attack of the Tatsu. The hotel also was super amazing. It was a Hilton hotel, so I was able to add my points. I'm grateful that the hotel room was comped, so be sure to check out the hotel if you want A Hilton Hotel when you're visiting Chattanooga that is so close, walking distance to a grocery store, all of these restaurants, all of these amenities. There's a free shuttle that can take you around town, or it's not even, at the time of this video, $5 and 5-minute Uber ride. I think one thing that's so rare and uncommon is that I actually got to be a roommate with some of the other attendees. Well, one was a speaker. I didn't even know it until I got into the room. So what happens is, There's a hotel booking group where you book for the dates of the actual conference, but for those who are getting familiarization trips, you are at any kind of hotel. And so I was like, I need a room with someone. I'm on a tight budget right now. And there's a Facebook group where someone posted and they responded through DM where I could room with them. If you're one of those that has siblings, this is nothing, right? But for me, my siblings are 7, 14. Years older than me, right? So it's been a long time since I've shared a bed with another woman, but it was perfectly fine because that's how we look out for each other of, okay, well, it's about to get a little tight here, so, you know, we're gonna have a little sleepover for a day or two. But little did I know that I was a roommate. I had a roommate with another one of the speakers. And it was great to get narration of the things that I've learned and how to intertwine all of it with the ever-changing technology. It's really a wonderful community.

AI tools, right? So we're very clear about that. We actually have an AI policy on our website for how we use it. We're encouraging our clients to do that. So that may or may not know that how I got into creator education was through a negotiation. Being online, there are revenue streams.

Number one, this is the sexiest one. This is what everyone wants, right? We want brand deals.

We have our county government, and then we have our city government. And so in terms of entrepreneurship, you have to be strategic, right? We have to create these allyships, right? And you want those allies to be aligned with your belief system. You want that foundation to be true. More often than not, that is not the case.

Oh, but I brought my paper because I'm an elder millennial with perimenopause, and I didn't trust my brain.

I didn't want to forget the important So forgive me.

One of my favorite parts was being able to dress up for the Bessie Awards. The Wanderfully is the name of the community before they started having events and in-person group trips. They also started something called the Bessie Coleman Awards, named after one of the first Black women pilots. And so they honored a woman in any industry, but my favorite honorees were the Black and Latina, Afro, and Indigenous women who got awarded. One of the first women in Space to pilot.

I realize that all the light on my face is Earth light, our planet's unique luminous glow, a beacon to the cosmos that says we exist.

Brighten my screen too a little bit. Oh, perfect, perfect. That looks great. Yeah.

Lauren Day is the founder of Outdoorsy Diva and a founding board member of the Black Travel Alliance.

This Trailblazer Award is I will be back!

So yeah, I had a great experience and I can't wait to see what the WITS Travel Creator Summit does next. So if you are considering attending WITS as a creator, as a travel professional, even if you have a disability, I hope you do. They're gonna be in Michigan, not far from Detroit, Michigan, in 2027, and definitely do that. I'll be watching from afar and always supporting, 'cause they were very supportive. If you've never attended or wondered about attending, definitely put it on your radar. And if you are ready to learn more about how you can travel like me, you can travel with me, you can make sure that your content is accessible to those with disabilities, Be sure to check out the link in the comments, link in the description for ways you can book a one-on-one mentorship with me. Download my book and my guide. I wrote a book called Seeing Life Through a Different Lens where I talked about the first half of my life, my mom and I together. We talked about what it was like being a childhood eye cancer survivor, a little bit of growing up in Tennessee as well. Tell me in the comments, what's one thing you are going to do to make sure that when you travel, your content is more accessible for those who may not see through your lens. Until then, I'll see you in the next video.