Partner Profile: Rachel Hawkes, Co-Founder, VP of Product at ViaHero

Like many successful startups, ViaHero has an extremely simple premise at its heart: locals know.

The three-year-old company, which is based in New York City by way of Pittsburgh’s AlphaLab, pairs travellers — to Cuba, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and Japan so far — with Heroes, locals who can provide access to experiences and helpful hints that aren’t in any guidebooks.

Uncorked partnered with ViaHero in the summer of 2018 to help evolve the brand’s design language with a series of Style Tiles, a lightweight brand book-like product perfect for startups.

We caught up with Rachel Hawkes, ViaHero’s co-founder and VP of Product, as she returned from her honeymoon just before the work went live and ViaHero announced its newest destination, Puerto Rico. She touched on the company’s strategy in the distributed tourism market and the power of a good redesign in unlocking other brand communications elements.

WI: What’s new in the world of ViaHero? It’s been a busy couple of months for you.

RH: It’s been so busy. We’ve been working on a re-skin of our website, and there’s been a lot of build up. We’re trying to connect emotionally with our travelers, as opposed to focusing only on the logical reasons why this is a valuable service. We did a lot of testing to make sure we really worked out the kinks before we deployed the new site. In hindsight, I’m really happy we did all of the testing, but it’s tough because we’re also antsy and want to just get it out.

We’ve also been gearing up for our launch in Puerto Rico, reaching out to our existing userbase to generate some hype about, that and joining the announcement with letting them know we’ve revamped our site. We’re really excited about Puerto Rico; in the same way that the timing of our Cuba launch was critical, we are thrilled to be a part of the movement to discover the new Puerto Rico.

WI: That’s one of the most interesting parts of ViaHero’s offer, this idea of reframing the “it” destination around a closer-to-real-people style of travel. Was that central to the business idea from the get-go, or was that something that emerged?

RH: We saw that once someone latched onto the service and went on a trip, they got it and they wanted to use ViaHero everywhere. Ninety percent of our travelers want to use ViaHero for their next trip. This is being validated over and over with each traveler.

In Cuba, besides making it easy for people to travel independently and legally, the service enables travelers to really dive into the culture. We knew this would resonate beyond Cuba, the only thing working against us was our lack of destinations.

And then the light bulb went off and we thought, wait, why don’t we lean into what’s working for us in Cuba, and think about how can we replicate that elsewhere?

Part of the strategy is jumping in at the point where these destinations are top of mind. We’re able to pull the curtain back and say “We can help provide access to this destination in a very different way,” whatever the perceived complexities may be, whether they’re unique to Cuba or Puerto Rico or wherever. We want to use Cuba as a model for opening up new territories and experiences to travelers everywhere.

Thinking about our launch in Puerto Rico, the timing of it, and our promise to foster a positive impact through travel, it supports our whole model. Trip planning fees go directly to locals, and the benefits of tourism get spread out more evenly within local communities.

“Trip planning fees go directly to locals, and the benefits of tourism get spread out more evenly within local communities.”

WI: How has the design work we did together impacted the expansion and broader growth at ViaHero?

RH: After finishing the design work with Uncorked, we’ve since focused quite a bit on language. What’s interesting is that it’s been so much easier to really dive in to the language :to translate a lot of the brand work we’ve done into campaigns, taglines, and brand promises. Because we now have a foundation that supports it.

Before we worked together, that was something I was going at in reverse. I was thinking so much about language — tweaking and testing words, phrases, and taglines here and there. Ultimately though, none of it was supported by this larger foundation that we now have. And it became a much easier exercise with that kind of support. Once we started diving back into language, I just kept saying to myself, “Wow, OK, now is the time for this work. Now is when it’s relevant.” It felt really good.

WI: So, you just got back from a honeymoon in France and Croatia. How does a travel professional who specializes in creating unique experiences approach planning a honeymoon?

RH: Ha! After our wedding we had a quick buffer day to pack and then we left, so there wasn’t a ton of time we could even plan; and I love planning. What we had going into the trip was really bare bones — we had all of our flights, our lodging, ferries that we were taking in Croatia, and our rental car in France. Basically just logistics and nothing else.

Both my husband and I love talking to people, that’s the best part of traveling. So everywhere we went, we met locals, we had conversations, and they sent us to this restaurant, or to that thing. We found our heroes everywhere.

For example, in Provence, when we were leaving Avignon, our Airbnb hosts asked us where we were headed next. We said, “Well, we’re checking into this hotel but we don’t really have plans between now and tonight. We’re thinking of grabbing lunch in one of the towns on the way.” And they said, “Okay hold on,” and called their friend who owns this restaurant, and came back to us saying they had made a reservation for lunch, that we had to ask for so-and-so when we got there, and that we should get there early because there was a cool outdoor market. And we’re like “OK, great!”

So then we had this incredible impromptu day that was totally flexible. We were on our own, we decided when to leave and how to get there, but we had these incredible tips from our host that totally made the day. When we arrived for lunch the restaurant owners sent us a lovely congratulation drink, it was really special.

We found our heroes everywhere we went, and it was such a reminder of how much deeper you can really go when you have that local connection — when you have someone looking out for you and listening to what you care about, and then making it happen.

With Intent readers interested in trying out ViaHero can use the the discount code UNCORKED10 for 10% off.