NEW ORLEANS — Laz Alonso set off a frenzied autograph and photo session for throngs of female fans at the Essence Music Festival inside the cavernous Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, courtesy of American Airlines and BlackAtlas.com, the renowned black travel site.
Alonso is best known playing Paula Patton’s love interest in the urban comedy hit film, Jumping the Broom. Alonso also starred in the highest grossing movie of all time, Avatar, as well as the blockbuster Fast and the Furious and Miracle at St. Anna. The line wrapped around the corner a couple of times at EMF 2011 in order to get a signed photo of Alonso and to take pictures with the rising Hollywood star.
American Airlines and BlackAtlas.com are working together to drive urban sophisticates and travel aficionados toward blackatlas.com, a spectacular website that offers unprecedented and comprehensive travel information for black travelers about dream cities around the world that American Airlines flies to.
Veronica Franklin, who came to the Essence Music Festival from Atlanta, said she found both Alonso and the Black Atlas website sexy. She said she will definitely use blackatlas.com to help her scope out places to visit when she finalizes her plans to fly to Greece.
“I heard from radio or TV that Black Atlas was a site that gave perspective of what black people or people of color would like to do and experience when they visit cities overseas,” she says. “The only thing that we had [prior to blackatlas.com] was Google and Trip Advisor. You can’t really get your perspective about where you would like to eat, where you like to go, where you’d like to go dancing from those. Just hearing that [blackatlas.com provided that information] made me interested in finding what it was about.”
In addition to the plethora of information loaded onto blackatlas.com about each glamorous national and international city, Franklin found the site very user-friendly. “It was very easy to navigate. Very easy,” she said.
–terry shropshire
