Travel industry entrepreneur Grace McBride got her career started at an earlier age than most. While still in college at Cornell University, she served as chief operations officer of MilesAhead, and also worked as a travel advisor under industry matriarch Valerie Wilson, whom McBride refers to fondly as her “grandmother in the travel world.”
But it was an entrepreneurship class in college that led her to a realization: The travel industry was full of savvy travel advisors, but many were in need of extra help to grow their businesses. So she, along with co-founder and classmate Sarah Peters, launched TripKit, a service for luxury travel advisors seeking assistants. They also added an itinerary-building component before selling the company in 2022.
“It was profitable, but it wasn’t scalable,” she said. “And we really felt like we needed to serve the industry at large. So, we decided to build Lucia, a separate company, which was a scalable take on TripKit. Lucia is essentially a freelance marketplace for the travel industry, [similar to] Fiverr or Upwork, that brings gig work into all aspects of the hospitality industry, whether you’re a hotel, a tour operator or a travel advisor.”
After selling TripKit, McBride and Peters are now focusing on Lucia as a marketplace platform. We sat down with McBride to learn more about the new company — which recently partnered with Virtuoso — and how travel industry businesses can use it to find new talent.
Tell me a little bit about Lucia. What sparked the idea to create it?
There's a massive labor crisis right now, and Lucia solves that for the businesses. And what we realized is that a lot of the industry is left brain/right brain. There are people who are incredibly creative, outspoken and salesy, and then there are people who are amazing at invoicing, operations and day-to-day task management. But unfortunately, a lot of people are trying to do both. Because this industry is so variable, we knew that there needed to be another way to address that.
Lucia is essentially a freelance marketplace for the travel industry, [similar to] Fiverr or Upwork, that brings gig work into all aspects of the hospitality industry, whether you’re a hotel, a tour operator or a travel advisor.
So, we started with that assistant work, but now we have [business development] roles within hotels and tour operators. We have customer service roles, or people who are doing account management. So, we started in the travel agency market, but we are also starting to move more into the [supplier] market, too.
You officially launched in January 2023. How have you seen the platform perform since?
We have approximately 100 active “CoPilots” (freelancers) right now, and we have another 100 on the waitlist. We do our own interviewing and background checking. And then on the customer side, we have more than 350 agencies, tour operators and hotels. And some of those are businesses with dozens of independent contractors under them.
How do you vet the CoPilots who appear on the platform?
I think that's the most important part of what we do. We don't want it to just become a [platform similar to] UpWork, where anyone could come on and sign up. We want it to be really specialized to travel. We go through a more technical interview, as well as a behavioral interview.
In our vetting process, we initially start with only individuals who have experience in the industry. That's our base mark. Some people may have worked as hotel concierges. Others might have worked as a marketing intern, or as an associate for a luxury travel brand. You have to have had some sort of job in the industry. And then we conduct a third-party background check. Then, we’ve got you to the point where your profile is accessible on the platform.
In our vetting process, we initially start with only individuals who have experience in the industry. That's our base mark.
On the other side of things, how can businesses work with you if they’re looking to hire help? And what is the pricing structure to use the platform?
When you sign up as a business, you can input all the details that you are looking for, the tools you use, the processes you need, things like that. And we'll suggest three CoPilots who would be a good fit.
We charge a subscription based on the number of “seats” [using the platform] at your business, and then we have a “task fee” that’s a percentage of whatever you’re paying the freelancer [for any particular job].
I’ll give you an example: Let’s say you’re a travel advisor who is looking for someone to become your out-of-office assistant while you’re away in Greece on a fam trip. You can pay someone, let’s say, $1,000 that week to cover your company and do business for you.
That CoPilot will make a percentage of that total $1,000 — that’s their take-home from doing the work. And we’ll take a small percentage of it. We don’t set the rates; that’s set between the CoPilot and the travel advisor. We don’t touch that, or get involved in determining their hours. And then we have the subscription fee that comes to us as recurring revenue. The subscription is $39 per month, or $390 for a year. If you’re part of Virtuoso, we offer a specialized price.
I think we’ll be able to help provide a much more flexible, and modern way to facilitate work across the hospitality industry.
What’s your vision for Lucia? How do you see it evolving?
I’ll tell you the big hairy vision that we tell investors. I think we’ll be able to help provide a much more flexible, and modern way to facilitate work across the hospitality industry. We want to start with gig work, because it's really applicable to the industry, and where the industry needs help right now.
But I think we'll be able to help transform permanent job postings and flexible, seasonal work. I think seasonal work will be an amazing opportunity for us that we have not even touched yet. As long as we stay in the vertical of hospitality and travel, that is what we really care about.
