We were lucky to catch up with Whitlei Neal recently and have shared our conversation below.

Whitlei, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

What my mom did best is instill me with confidence and resilience. I feel that there is nothing in this world that I cannot achieve if I put my mind to it. Everything that I have and everything that I am has come from hard work and dedication.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hello! My name is Whitlei, but my followers know me as @TravelBaeWhit and @TheBoogieFoodie. By day, I lead a team of software developers as Product Owner, but on nights and weekends, I am Atlanta Restaurant Vlogger and Travel Connoisseur. I create travel and restaurant review content on my 2 Instagram pages (mentioned above) as well as create travel vlogs for YouTube. In addition to this, I consider myself an Atlanta Local Guide. I am an avid reviewer of local businesses; hence I am a proud Yelp Elite member and Google Local Guide (Level 6). From the age of 18, I knew I wanted to travel. I left Fort Valley, GA to attend Georgia State University. Within the first year of being in Atlanta, I had made my first trip “abroad” to Puerto Rico to study Afro Hispanic studies (it’s the United States but to an 18 year old girl from the country, it was abroad to me 😊). By the time I graduated, I had studied South American Business in Argentina and Brazil. From there, I was hooked, and the traveling never stopped. Since then, I have traveled to over 20 countries (some more than once). While traveling, I realized my love for food and culture. I believe there is nothing more rewarding than experiencing someone’s else’s culture, through their own lens. In my opinion, a big way of understanding culture is to understand why people eat what they eat and how they eat what they eat. People eat what they can grow or catch, what they have access to, and what works best for them environmentally.
Being that I am always traveling and eating at new or unique places, people would always DM me asking me questions like: “What restaurant is that?”, “How much was the hotel there?”, “How much was the flight?”, “How did you find that excursion?”. So, one day, I just decided to change my name on Instagram from “whitinreallfe” to “travelbaewhit’. At that time, I didn’t plan on it becoming a brand, I just figured, I’d be more detailed about my travels and people might appreciate it. I started to post about my travels; from how much things cost, to how I find travel deals, to things I like to do while traveling. In trying to grow followers, I realized that I had to post content more often than I could travel, so I started telling people about all the cool things I did around Atlanta (that is where the Local Guide role comes in). This not only helped me to post consistently, but the content was consistent with what my followers were interested in.
It became clear to me that I eat out more than the average person. So less than a year ago, I decided to start a separate page @TheBoogieFoodie. I use that page to post reels about restaurants I have visited in Atlanta. I had a slow start, but then the followers just started rolling in. In just 6 months, I went from 50 followers to over 400. My niche is urban contemporary restaurants, but I have no problem hunting down a good food truck and I love food halls like Politan Row and Chattahoochee Food Works.
What I am most proud of about my social media pages is the diversity of followers that I have. They range in sex, age, religion, and economic status. This makes me feel proud because that lets me know that I connect with people at a human level. Because every human must eat, and most humans have the desire to travel. I knew I was making a difference when my coworker DMed me and said, “Whit, my mom says that she wants me to get out more. She saw this post that shows all the Atlanta festivals for the summer and sent it to me telling me that I should go to one of them.” The post was mine. My post (which had 13k views on it) had reached the mother of one of my coworkers and came back around to me.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Unfortunately for us all, eating and traveling isn’t free; but its what I love to do. Thus, my goal is to secure brand partnerships with travel and restaurant groups. These strategic partnerships would allow me the opportunity to utilize their product or service for no cost in exchange for creating creative content for their business. My desire is to work with restaurants, hotels, airlines, and tourism centers. My ultimate goal is to remove the financial restraint of creating content so that I can provide more content for my followers.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Consistency is key. I have learned through multiple channels that posting reels at least 3 times a week will grow your following at the fastest possible rate. Also, networking. I am so grateful for Yelp Elite and Instagram as I have learned that the foodie scene is very small in Atlanta. The more events I go to and activity I have on social media, the more people I connect with. All the foodies that I have met out at festivals have been super friendly and been willing to tell me what works best for them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.travelbaewhit.com
• Instagram: @travelbaewhit AND @theboogiefoodie
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whitlei.neal/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq6cjWAZ8FI16U30CUz6Yeg
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=8qe41GBumFvr3Kxg5lL8qw&utm_source=ishare

Image Credits
Collin Partee @collinonice