“ViaHero Is A New Of Traveling”, Says Co-Founder Ben Preston

How would you describe ViaHero in a few words?

In very simple terms: Locals plan, you travel. ViaHero is a local travel concierge for the Airbnb crowd. Travelers hire local experts to plan their personalized trip.

What inspired you to create the startup? How did it all start?

Greg Buzulencia, the CEO and co-founder of ViaHero, has always had a passion for planning trips and figuring out how to discover areas travelers don’t typically see. For years, friends had been asking him to plan their trips, and he quickly realized that travelers lacked the time and local knowledge to plan their own unique, off the beaten path international trips. For independent travelers, the options were to spend 30+ hours planning a trip on their own, skip the planning altogether and wing it, or use a travel agent who’s incentivized to sell you a more expensive trip — all of which can easily end in disappointment.

Greg wanted to create a way to make it easy and exciting to go on an authentic international trip where travelers benefit from expert knowledge from real people who actually live in the places they plan trips to. He soon connected with Rachel Hawkes and me, who share his vision for creating enriched, off the beaten path trip plans.

You work closely with locals who provide personalized guidebooks as well as one-on-one consulting for travelers. How do you get in touch with these local experts and in what ways can you ensure the quality of the trips they plan?

We’ve built a scalable vetting, onboarding, and training program for our local experts, who we call Heroes, teaching them how to be effective travel planners. Additionally, we’ve perfected what goes into the ideal trip plan and standardized our trip planning process across Heroes and markets. Each Hero creates a detailed personalized itinerary with local descriptions and insights on where to go, builds custom offline maps so you can navigate through your phone without data, and secures arrangements for any services needed such as guides, drivers, restaurant reservations, etc.

Currently, you cover trips to Japan, Iceland, and Cuba. Which destinations are next on your list?

ViaHero initially launched in Cuba in 2016 and expanded into Iceland and Japan after that.We’ll be launching in Colombia next, followed by Ecuador. After that, we’re looking at expanding into more countries in South America.

Are you using ViaHero internally?

Of course, we encourage our team members to use our service when traveling. We are a community of avid travelers who value recommendations from locals – and make use of them.

What is the biggest challenge that the company has faced so far and what are your biggest learning points?

ViaHero is a new way of traveling. People are used to planning trips on their own, using a travel agent whose fees are hidden in commissions, or booking a group tour. They’re not used to paying a trip planning fee for independent travel. Since this is a new way to travel, we have to educate our travelers on the value of paying for personalized trip planning services from a real, local expert.

The travel industry is very competitive, with many companies joining the party every day. From your perspective, what will it take to stay on top of the game?

We have to provide amazing service and great value to our travelers – and measure it to stay on track. For example, we track our Net Promoter Score (NPS) diligently and our NPS is higher than Airbnb’s.

What’s next for ViaHero?

We will continue to grow and add travel planners to our platform in expansion countries. We’re working to become the default platform for human-based travel planning help, similar to how Airbnb has become the default platform to help travelers find homes to stay in.

What’s one piece of advice you can give to fellow founders for their startup?

Be resilient. You’re competing against larger companies with more resources. You must be creative, dedicated to your mission, and willing to work hard.

Editor’s Note: ViaHero is open for partnerships – if you’re in the travel industry & would like to chat, you can get in touch with Ben.

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