Fora was born out of a need to modernize the travel advisor industry, and with the addition of artificial intelligence to Fora’s Portal, its mission continues, putting powerful and innovative tech tools into the hands of travel advisors.
Our tech team understands that advisors need quick access to accurate information when researching trips for their clients, so we built an AI chatbot to help. Meet Sidekick: Fora’s AI assistant for Fora Advisors.
“Sidekick is a great example of how we can make simple, yet powerful improvements to parts of the legacy tech infrastructure in the travel industry,” said Fora’s Co-Founder & CPO/CTO Jake Peters.
The power of Sidekick is seen in expediting everyday advisor tasks, such as searching for resources from our portfolio of partners and training.
“Sidekick is super useful for accessing anything quickly,” Fora Advisor Lauren Ruehl said, “whether I'm looking for a preferred partner contact, information about programs within fora or training on specific subjects.”
What is Sidekick?
Sidekick is a GPT-4 chatbot that is trained on Fora’s proprietary information to help provide our travel advisors with easy-to-access, relevant information that assists them with the booking process. Sidekick is embedded directly into the Fora Advisor Portal alongside the rest of our advisors’ suite of business tools.
What information can Sidekick find? What does Sidekick know?
One of the benefits of being a Fora Advisor is the breadth of resources. Sidekick has access to Fora’s library of resources that includes nearly 400 training videos, 200+ Help Center articles, and 35,000+ hotel partners (and counting). Sidekick searches those sources, putting all the relevant information at advisors’ fingertips in seconds.
How does Sidekick help Fora Advisors?
Accessible directly within Portal via the “Get Help” button, Sidekick is the fastest way to get support—combining AI-powered answers with human assistance when needed. Results are presented directly within Sidekick, with citations that reference relevant Help Center articles, training, and other resources to quickly answer questions while providing links for additional follow-up.
For example, advisors can ask, “How do I log into a new partner site?”, “Where can I find training on cruise providers?”, or “I’m having a technical issue—who can help?” and Sidekick lists the answers and relevant links so advisors can quickly determine next steps. If Sidekick can’t answer a question, advisors can seamlessly route their conversation to Fora’s human support team.
“I find myself using Sidekick to help point me in the right direction. For example, I'll ask Sidekick for training on cruise providers,” Fora Advisor Jen Lyon said. “I also use Sidekick whenever I'm looking for instructions to log onto a new partner site, and I use Sidekick to answer my how-to operational questions to complete bookings.”
What’s next for Sidekick?
With the dynamic nature of artificial intelligence, Sidekick is constantly improving and learning, pairing the best tech tools with the wisdom of the modern travel advisor to plan incredible trips.
“Over time, we will be enabling Sidekick to have more information and powers,” Jake said. “We also have an aggressive AI roadmap of product features including giving Sidekick access to all of our historical booking information, the ability to drive our Booking Platform to pull rates, availability and perks, along with each advisor's own client information to deliver the next level of helpful advice and solutions for advisors.”
