Award-winning sports journalist Malika Andrews recently revealed her favorite stays in the newest season of Hotels.com’s “Perfect 10.” As the official travel partner of the NBA, Hotels.com launched the digital series in 2023. The series challenges sports, TV, film, music, food, and fashion personalities to answer 10 rapid-fire questions that reveal personal stories around travel.
This season, the popular accommodation booking platform is heading to the court, spotlighting some of the most well-traveled professionals working in basketball. As the series’ first cast, Andrews is profiled alongside NBA players Jimmy Butler, Nikola Jokić, and Austin Reaves. In the three-minute episode, she shares some of her favorite hotel moments, fondest family memories, and helpful travel tips worth saving for later.
As the only woman in this season’s cast, Andrews’ “Perfect 10” episode is both relatable and endearing. Travel Noire spoke with Andrews to glean from her globetrotting wisdom as an Emmy-nominated broadcaster and journalist.
Travel Noire: Because you travel so much for work, your travel accessory game has to be top-notch. What are 2-3 must-have items that you always travel with?
Malika Andrews: I love a neck pillow when I’m traveling. I have a collection in my closet. Every time I’ve forgotten to bring [one] with me, I get another, so I have a weird amount of nine to ten neck pillows.
A book is always a must-have for me on airplanes. That’s when I do my best reading. Tea is [also] something that I always bring with me. Airlines don’t always have it and I love a cup of mint tea to relax on a flight. Usually, they only have the caffeinated stuff.
I’ll even share it with the person next to me because people will ask, “Oh, excuse me, do you have a non-caffeinated tea?” The flight attendant will usually say, “No,” and I say, “I’ve gotcha.”
TN: What are some of your favorite destinations to visit? Is there one memorable trip or experience that just sticks with you forever?
MA: As I mentioned in Hotels.com [“Perfect 10”], one of the places that I love the most in the world is New York City. It’s somewhere that I’ve been going my whole life. I have family that lives there. It was always sort of a dream maybe because I grew up on the West Coast, in California.
New York was always synonymous with Jay-Z. If you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. It was, sort of, synonymous with success for me. I grew up on Sex and the City, and as a writer, watching Carrie Bradshaw it always felt like this magical place [where] dreams came true. I was lucky enough to live there on and off for five years; the city just always holds a pulse.
Somewhere else that’s really special to me is Lake Tahoe, California. My dad was a ski patrolman in Tahoe when he and my mom were younger. I learned how to ski there [and] grew up spending winter, as much as I could, skiing in Lake Tahoe.
There’s a photo that my parents still have pinned in a popsicle stick frame at their home of me at two years old. It is a dumping down snowstorm. I’m in my tiny little goggles and my tiny little snowsuit, trudging through the snow on skis. My dad [is] walking behind me because no one else would go out that day. But me, at two [years old], was like, “Nope, Dad. We are going skiing today. I don’t care that it is snowing as hard as I have seen it in my lifetime. We are going to do this.”
My dad loves the photo so he keeps it up and reminds me of that adventure that we had. We’ve been having snow adventures ever since.
TN: What is it like to be on the road so much working at ESPN? Is this what you always dreamed of?
MA: I think it’s a balance. It’s something that I always hoped for myself that I would have a job where every day looks different and that held excitement in itself. My mom is an artist and an art teacher and my dad is a fitness professional, so I grew up with two parents where every day looked a little bit different. That’s what was modeled for me, and that always felt like that’s what was going to resonate with the lifestyle that I was hoping to have.
Sports are so special. I was traveling overseas, in Europe last summer, counting the number of people wearing Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Michael Jordan jerseys. Basketball is such a universal language. It doesn’t matter whether you speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese. It doesn’t matter because you have this game that you can come to and have that be your shared experience. I really love that basketball’s brought me all over the world.
TN: In your Hotels.com “Perfect 10” episode, you shared how one of the hotels had a diffuser available in the room. For the curly girls, can you speak to your excitement at that moment?
MA: [I have] never walked into a hotel and had my curly kinky hair accounted for as a Black woman. Walking into that hotel and seeing that, I squealed with delight. This is the diamond that you do not see in every single hotel.
Now I’m always on the lookout for number two. Which hotel is going to be the second one to ever have a diffuser? I’m making it my mission to see our hair included in hotels across the world. That is what I hope to see.
TN: What do you most love to do when you’re at home, not on the go?
MA: When I am at home I most love to ride horses and take trampoline cardio classes, which is my new obsession. Even when I’m at home, especially for long stretches, one of the great things about Hotels.com is that I’m a fan of a staycation.
I’m a fan of moseying, particularly in Southern California, 20 to 45 minutes, looking up where you can just go for a night that is within budget. I’m such a planner that every once in a while having a bit of spontaneity that can be supported by such a vast database is something a big fan of.
This article has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.