$1 billion travel agent platform Fora just landed its first CMO. Aug 5, 2026, 3:30 AM PT Destination: Fora. Fora Travel, the AI-powered platform that links travel agents (the human kind) with people planning their vacations, has appointed its first chief marketing officer, CMO Insider can exclusively reveal. Alanna Gregory has joined the company from Block, where she was VP of marketing. The hire comes on the heels of Fora raising $60 million in a funding round at a $1 billion valuation. The company said it would use those funds to bolster the AI tools it offers its travel planners. Gregory told me her immediate marketing priorities are threefold: building an iconic brand, growing its advisor network, and developing a "best in class" sales and marketing organization. Fora's consumer play. Fora offers travel advisors tech tools and training to help them build their businesses in exchange for a cut of their sales and an annual fee. Travelers looking for an agent fill out a short questionnaire about their ideal getaways before being matched. The company said it has more than 15,000 advisors who have booked more than $3 billion in travel since its founding in 2021. Allen Adamson, cofounder of the marketing firm Metaforce, told me that while Fora has made ground with investors and advisors, it still needs to work on building its consumer brand. "The CMO's job is to make a promise to travelers. Fora does not have one yet. Advisors know Fora. Travelers do not," he said. Fora is up against formidable competition, from well-known travel brands like Expedia and Airbnb, to the AI chatbots consumers increasingly use to plan their trips. Adamson said Fora's promise needs to center on the experience that machines can't fake: "The judgment of someone who's been there and done that, and trust." Gregory said Fora's marketing is focused on building the future of human expertise in travel. Its core market is millennials, who are often juggling the logistics of traveling with multigenerational families, she added. Gregory is designing Fora's marketing organization 'for the AI era' AI is still top of mind. Gregory said Fora is investing heavily in its Reddit presence, where many of its advisors are active, given that the platform is often highly cited by LLMs. She's also focused on designing the marketing team "for the AI era." From product marketers to data experts, the team will contribute to a centralized "context library" database containing materials on brand messaging, audience personas, and sales call transcripts, so that the entire organization is training on the same data and can automate some of their work. Fora has already produced some buzzy marketing in the past, mainly focused on partnerships, such as its tie-up with the luggage brand Away and its launch of a concierge service with the dog-friendly airline Bark Air. Gregory said she intends to draw on inspiration from her time working on Block's Cash App, which she said was "completely unafraid to take big, bold bets" such as its launch of the browser-based game "Cash Apples," which had a $500,000 prize pool. "It was highly contested within the creative marketing organization, and we stuck by it," Gregory said. "It was a hit." Gregory said that the Fora brand will similarly begin testing new marketing formats and "maybe take some of those bold bets."

Fora reports latest round of funding hits US$60 million, with $1 billion valuation. Post date: Jul 17 2026 NEW YORK CITY - Host agency Fora says it has raised US$60 million in funding, for a total of $138.5 million, and now has a post-money valuation of $1 billion. Fora is based in the U.S. with its headquarters in New York City, but in recent years it has expanded into international markets including Canada and Mexico. The company says the financing follows a period of accelerated growth, with Fora advisors booking more than $3 billion in travel since Fora was founded in 2021. "INCREDIBLE MOMENTUM" Fora's Natalie Lum-Tai, Head of Canada Operations, told Travelweek earlier this year that since launching in Canada last April, Fora has seen "incredible momentum," with its Canadian advisor community, growing by 230%. In a July 16 post Fora co-founder Evan Frank said the $60 million in funding is a milestone that's "a recognition of the scale Fora advisors have already built. Nearly three times an hour, someone becomes an entrepreneur for the first time on Fora. The number of Fora advisors booking over $2 million per year tripled over last year. And we recently crossed 1 million hotel bookings." With five years now under the host agency's belt, Frank said the next five years will focus on more tech including AI. "AI will play a major role in the future, but not by replacing the human judgement, taste, relationships and advocacy that make the difference between a good itinerary and a great trip. It will help take on the admin, workflows and repeatable tasks behind the scenes, so advisors can spend more time on the parts of the job only humans can do." The company notes that It took Fora three years to reach its first $1 billion in lifetime bookings, eight months to reach the second billion and five months to reach the third. Fora is scaling Via, its embedded AI assistant, currently in beta with a group of the company's top advisors. The new AI operating layer across Fora's entire platform is designed to help advisors tackle tasks like destination research, supplier knowledge, client itineraries, and proposal generation, reducing admin work. According to company stats, 97% of Fora's 15,000+ active travel advisors are new-to-industry.