🧳 Fora: $$billion platform behind modern travel agents

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Everyone said travel agents were dead. Killed by Expedia, Booking.com, and Google Flights.

Evan Frank, Henley Vazquez, and Jake Peters saw something different: an industry that was relevant but stuck in 1995. 

They saw an opportunity to build a tech platform that turns everyday people into travel advisors, delivers customers to travel providers at 1/3 the CAC of Google Ads, and gives travelers a more curated, perk-filled experience. A rare win-win-win.

Since launching in 2021, Fora has powered $1B+ in bookings through 10,000+ travel advisors.

Let’s break down the wild story and the playbook behind one of travel’s fastest-growing platforms 👇.

The $billion idea came from the most unexpected place: a school pickup.

Evan Frank was dropping his daughter off at school when he struck up a conversation with another parent, Henley Vazquez, whose kid was in the same grade. Henley mentioned she was a travel agent, but she wasn't your stereotypical travel agent from the 90s with a dusty office and cruise ship brochures.

She was cool. She loved her job. She had more social invitations than she could handle - both in New York and around the world. She was living the dream. Yet the industry was dominated by either antiquated agencies or soulless online booking platforms.

Evan, who was running onefinestay (think high-end Airbnb for luxury homes), thought to himself: "Why aren't there way more people like Henley?"

At the same time, Evan was dealing with his own headaches at onefinestay. Customer acquisition was brutal. They were burning cash on Google ads and Facebook campaigns, desperately trying to figure out multichannel distribution at scale.

Then something serendipitous happened. Travel agents started calling onefinestay.

"Hey, we heard good things about you guys. Do you work with travel agents? We only charge 10%."

Evan nearly fell off his chair. That was three times cheaper than Google ads.

This wasn't just a lightbulb moment 💡 - it was a floodlight. He found this new distribution channel that was surprisingly relevant, cost-effective, and completely overlooked by the tech world. 

The only problem: the industry wasn't going to innovate its way into the future on its own.

Evan had discovered the ultimate CAC arbitrage hiding in plain sight. And he had the perfect co-founder in Henley, who understood the industry from the inside. Later, Jake Peters would join as the third co-founder to help build the technology platform.

Fora didn't try to reinvent travel economics - they just made them work better for everyone.

The Platform: Fora built a comprehensive "business-in-a-box" for modern travel advisors:

The Business Model: It's what Evan calls the "better equation in travel" - a true quadruple win:

The genius is in the incentive structure. Fora only makes money when advisors make money, creating a virtuous cycle where everyone's interests are perfectly aligned.

Before building anything fancy, they needed to validate two critical hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: Could they find a deep pool of people interested in becoming "travel agent 2.0"?

Hypothesis 2: Could they turn those people into successful travel advisors who build real businesses?

Experiment 1: waitlist demand test

To validate hypothesis #1, they ran paid social ads targeting travel enthusiasts with a simple value proposition: become a modern travel agent with professional tools and training.

Within a few months, they built a 10,000-person waitlist from paid social. Beyond the number, they also felt the overwhelming interest from aspiring travel entrepreneurs. 

This demand pull helped them gain the conviction that they could bring new people into this profession at scale.

Experiment 2: $100K benchmark

For the second hypothesis, they needed to prove they could turn travel enthusiasts into real business builders. 

They set a clear benchmark: advisors needed to be on track to book $100K in gross travel volume annually. This would generate ~$8,000 in take-home income, enough to be a serious side hustle or stepping stone to full-time work. 

To support their initial cohort of travel advisors, they built a simple MVP:

No tech. Just the basics.

~100 advisors from their initial cohort hit the $100K booking trajectory. They had proven both hypotheses. 

The Google Drive approach worked for 100 advisors, but it wouldn't work for 10,000. 

By summer 2022, they launched their first proper product: a comprehensive platform where advisors could log in, access training, see provider partnerships, track commissions, and manage their entire business.

Here is how the product evolved:

But the real magic was in maintaining the human elements that made the manual approach work while adding the technology that made it scalable.

Fora charges a subscription fee for all travel advisors on its platform ($49/month or $299/year), but the bulk of its revenue comes from commissions on bookings. 

Gross Bookings = Number of Advisors × Average Gross Bookings per Advisor

Growing the number of advisors

To increase the number of advisors, Fora doubled down on the paid social strategies that originally helped build its 10K+ waitlist.

Still, half of advisor growth comes organically, fueled by a tight-knit network of engaged advisors. Fora also excels at SEO. Its team and advisor-contributed travel blogs, focused on guides and tips across destinations, have earned top 2 rankings for high-intent keywords like “travel agent” and “travel advisor”, leading to 500K+ organic monthly visits.

Improving advisor productivity

Getting more advisors on the platform is only half the equation. Fora also focuses heavily on making each advisor more productive.

They invest in continuous training through live sessions and new course drops, helping advisors level up over time. The platform also includes AI-powered itinerary tools and booking assistants that save time and improve the quality of client trips.

On the community side, advisors learn from each other and make meaningful connections  through community groups and specialist networks—think safari experts, honeymoon specialists, or Europe pros. 

Beyond that, Fora helps advisors build their businesses. They offer advanced certifications, marketing assets, and client acquisition playbooks to help turn side hustles into full-time careers.

This focus on advisor productivity creates a powerful flywheel: better-trained advisors book more trips, which attracts more advisors, which makes the whole network smarter—and the cycle keeps spinning.

Building Fora isn't all smooth sailing. 

Working with an antiquated tech stack

Travel runs on incredibly antiquated systems. The GDS (Global Distribution System) that powers hotel bookings is like a Bloomberg terminal, powerful but user-hostile. Building modern, consumer-friendly experiences on top of these systems requires significant engineering investment.

Every booking, every commission calculation, every client interaction has to work seamlessly despite running on 1990s infrastructure underneath.

Succeeding as a travel advisor isn’t easy

There's an inherent consumer skepticism about using people to help plan trips. It seems antiquated to many. 

While some advisors can get friends and family to book with them, this trust barrier means advisors need real grit and business-building skills to succeed. It's not enough to just love travel - you need to be comfortable with entrepreneurship and sales. It’s pivotal for Fora to provide travel advisors the tools to succeed AND bring in the advisors who have that intrinsic grit and drive to survive in this biz.

Today, Fora has over 10,000 active advisors building travel businesses across the US and internationally, contributing to $1B+ in lifetime gross bookings. Recently, it closed a $40M Series C led by Thrive Capital to continue scaling the platform.

However, more impressively, 97% of Fora advisors had never worked this role before and many of them are now earning 6-figures annually, quitting their jobs to become full-time travel entrepreneurs. 

1/ Dying industries = hidden gold: While others chased AI and crypto, Fora bet on travel agents. Legacy space, solid fundamentals—just needed better tools.

2/ Align incentives, unlock scale: Fora only earns when advisors earn. Everyone wins, so everyone pushes growth.

3/ Build tech that scales humans, not replaces them: Fora didn’t try to automate away advisors; they built tools that made them better. AI-assisted, not AI-replaced.

4/ Community compounds: Advisor referrals, tips, and specialist groups drive growth. The network becomes the product.

5/ B2B2C is a cheat code: Fora empowers advisors to build businesses. They win, Fora wins, and the customer gets better service.

—

See you next Tuesday 😉,

Leo

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