Fora Advisor (& GE Aerospace's Senior Finance Manager) A'Rielle Thomas on Getting Local, Slow Travel & Designing the Perfect Trip

Images courtesy of A'Rielle Thomas

Fora Advisor A’Rielle Thomas is no stranger to travel. She’s lived all over the world, accumulating local knowledge and the best insider intel. A’Rie has since leveraged these skills to become the stellar travel agent she is, which is especially impressive considering she also has a full-time job as a Senior Finance Manager at GE Aerospace. We recently sat down with A’Rie to learn more about her journey as a Fora Advisor, how she curates client trips and her favorite way to travel.

From globetrotter to travel advisor

Images courtesy of A'Rielle Thomas

At the start of her career with GE, she joined their global audit program, which allowed her to travel to numerous destinations around the world. “You go wherever they tell you to go every four months: new assignment, new manager, new location,’” A’Rie said. “I thought it would be a really good way to see the world.”

And see the world she did. She lived in Paris, Berlin, Monterrey, Zürich… 

“I really got to see how the locals experienced where they lived,” she said, “to feel like you’ve immersed yourself in the culture.”

In Berlin, she lived in a hotel for 40 days, so she became friends with the concierge, or would hang out with the staff after work. She had all the best recommendations, and gladly advised others on where to go, what to do, what to eat. She aimed to give her friends that local experience she herself enjoyed. 

In 2021, one of A’Rie’s best friends was turning 30. She wanted to do something big, so she enlisted A’Rie to plan an epic girl’s trip to Miami. A’Rie handled the flights, hotel reservations, restaurant reservations — the works. She’s the type of person who dives in and figures things out (she is an accountant, after all), so the booking process came naturally to her. 

After the trip, others started reaching out. They had seen the recap on social media and wanted their own special, fully planned experience. A’Rie realized that she couldn’t invest that kind of time — on top of her full-time job — into planning such trips for free. But people were willing to pay. 

She started to charge a planning fee, and soon acquired a large enough client base where she thought, “I should probably figure out how to really legitimize this.” Then she found Fora.

The timing turned out to be perfect: she was on sabbatical and had the space to dive into Fora’s travel agent training. “This is something I can really do and jump into feet first,” she thought at the time. “I've got the time to do it.”

She found the destination trainings to be especially valuable. “One of the fears I had was, once I become a legitimate travel agent, how do I sell Thailand if I've never been to Asia?” she shared. “The destination trainings really gave me that confidence.”

Fora’s trainings offered an in-depth look at different destinations around the world, allowing her to unlock for clients those hyper-local experiences she valued. The advisor community and partner network allowed her to do the same. If she’s unfamiliar with a hotel or destination a client is interested in, she’ll ask another advisor or reach out to a hotel’s sales director directly. (She even enlisted a fellow Fora Advisor, Nadia Bess, to plan and book an upcoming trip to Japan for her and her husband.)

Slow travel, planning the best trips and continuous learning

Images courtesy of A'Rielle Thomas

She’s recently been leaning into slow travel, and has tried to help her clients embrace a similar ethos.  

“I want to be in the destination. I want to walk around. I want to meet people. I want to go to the local spots,” she said of her own travel style. “I don't want to plan every hour of the day.”

Unsurprisingly, A’Rie is very methodical and detail-oriented when curating trips for clients. This process starts with asking the right questions, of course: “Do you want to lie on the beach or do you want to do activities?...What kind of weather do you like? What kind of sand do you want? Are you a big foodie? Do you want to leave the resort?”

“The more information I have, the more I use process of elimination to really get to an answer,” she added. “That's been my formula.”

She’ll make sure to leave ample time for spontaneity, allowing space where nothing is on the books. It comes down to finding that special gem that allows someone to experience the essence of a place. Her recommendations are always top-notch, especially when it comes to food.  

“If the chef has a James Beard award or is experimenting in the kitchen, I want to go taste that,” she said. “In all of my itineraries, I'll recommend one Michelin-Starred restaurant, but I also like to throw in some more local spots.”

A’Rie loves tasting menus, but she also loves casual dives. It comes down to getting the best experience, however that might look.

“What is the one dish or one restaurant that you can only experience in that place?” she mused. “I try to find at least one of those for all of my clients’ trips, just to throw in something special in there.”

Really leaning into the hotel aspect of a trip also aligns with her slow-travel philosophy. If you’re spending the money, she reasons, you might as well make the most out of your experience. Part of being a travel advisor, however, is understanding a client's needs, and tailoring their trip accordingly.

“I like the client part of it,” A’Rie said, “Just to see their eyes light up when I say something that's going to be really cool, or when they kind of look at me like, not sure about that one. Alright, cool. We can pivot. I can work with that.”

Designing trips for different types of clients, fielding feedback, being flexible, finding the perfect hotel and designing the ideal itinerary takes patience, of course, as well as an eagerness to learn, something A’Rie embraces. 

“As much client feedback as I can get, whether it's orally or just reading faces,” she added, “helps me to be a better travel advisor."