Fora Travel says it is “pursuing everything” to enter the UK market, following a milestone year in which it surpassed $1 billion in sales and two million room nights booked.
The New York-based “modern travel agency” was founded in 2021 by Passported co-founder Henley Vazquez, along with Evan Frank – co-founder of Onefinestay – and Jake Peters (who created PayPerk) with the aim of modernising the role of the travel advisor in a post-pandemic world.
Seeing an industry that was “ageing out” and difficult to break into, Vazquez told TTG Luxury the trio set out to create a more inclusive model leveraging technology to “democratise” the profession.
Four years later, Fora has “thousands” of travel advisors operating across 92 countries and has raised nearly $80 million in funding from investment firms including Thrive Capital and Insight Partners. And, after expanding into Canada and Mexico earlier this year, it’s now considering the UK as a market of interest.
“We are pursuing everything to be an official agency here,” said Vazquez. “There are fairly strict licensing requirements. We need to navigate that legal landscape.”
That legal landscape of course, includes the requirement of an Atol should Fora wish to sell packages to UK holidaymakers (which it says it does). The agency does however already have a community of advisors in the UK – albeit American ex-pats who are booking travel for US-based clients.
Breaking barriers
At its core, Fora says that it “empowers” people to become travel advisors – without what it says are the traditional barriers to entry, such as initial high costs and the demand for experience.
Advisors pay $49 a month for access to Fora’s proprietary booking platform, admin support, marketing tools and virtual training. They earn an average of 70% commission on bookings and have the option to charge service fees.
There’s also no requirement for prior experience – 97% of its advisors come from other professional backgrounds, many of which are high-paying.
“They bring their skills from fields like law, tech, media and medicine, and they’re using their networks to build their business,” Vazquez said.
The platform also attracts people with a range of different backgrounds, from stay-at-home parents and tech workers to people in their 50s and 60s stepping away from corporate life.
“The travel industry wasn’t evolving – it was ageing out,” Vazquez said. “The path to becoming an advisor used to be rigid: quit your job, pay for expensive training and meet sales minimums. We offer an alternative for people who want to pursue a passion for travel without starting over completely.”
Fora’s flexible model allows advisors to work part-time or full-time with no minimum booking requirements. That inclusivity is key to both its growth and diversity – advisors bring in a wide array of clientele, says Fora, often tapping into personal networks of people who’ve never used a travel advisor before.
“We want to capture a market that the industry hasn’t touched,” Vazquez explained. “And we take all our advisors seriously – full-time or part-time. In fact, 35 of our advisors have achieved seven-figure bookings within their first year and not all of them are full-time.”
Vazquez is equally confident about suppliers’ trust in Fora. The agency works with nearly 6,000 hotel properties and belongs to all major preferred partner programmes, such as Four Seasons, Rosewood Elite and Relais & Chateaux.
Its wide network of agents, and thus expansive pool of clients, means these top-tier brands are seeing more bookings across more of their properties.
“The community is delivering in terms of sales,” Vazquez added. “With many of our suppliers we went from the new kid on the block to their top booker.”
She also maintains, however, that Fora’s priority will always be its advisors as it navigates this next era of its evolution.
“We will continue to follow that same North Star we’ve had since the beginning: how to support our advisors to build a serious travel business. That will never change,” she said.
