Becoming a Fora Travel Advisor as a Side Hustle During a Summer of Airline Chaos

Morgan Pesce, a full-time social media specialist and travel and lifestyle blogger in Rhode Island, reached out to Fora Travel in March about becoming a part-time travel advisor. After a video onboarding call, and learning about the startup travel agency's support resources, Pesce booked four trips in April for friends, other people in her network, and herself.

Her commission checks arrived a couple of weeks after the trips.

"It was their mission that spoke to me," said Pesce, 37, referring to Fora Travel, adding she's contacted travel agencies before but didn't like their "big box, cookie-cutter approach," replete with Marriott stays and cruises.

Fora Travel's mission is to reinvent the travel agency and the role of travel agents, offering passionate travelers side hustles as travel advisors and perks for their travels, and commission checks paid lickety-split with very modest training before they begin booking trips. Fora Travel has $18.5 million in venture funding — something you don't see very often with travel agencies — and doesn't see any reason why it can't add 100,000 travel advisors to its ranks in a relatively short period of time.

Skift has written a bit already about Fora Travel, which was founded last year, but we wanted to find out more about its business model, especially because there have in the past been several multilevel marketing schemes where companies offer people who know nothing about the travel business perks for their own travels, and fees when they get their friends to sign up — and so on.