Meet Nicer: An App That Matches Consumers to Their Ideal Travel Advisor

Ragan Stone, the CEO and founder of travel tech startup Nicer, wants to make finding a travel advisor as easy as getting food delivered on DoorDash, ordering an Uber, or booking a house on Airbnb. 

Nicer, which was launched in February, is the brainchild of Stone, a working advisor from Birmingham, and co-founder Joe Lage Stone. The two have built Nicer as a quasi-host agency that offers a tech-heavy lead generation tool for its advisors, allowing clients and consumers to match with them in just a few taps of their phone screen.  

Think Tinder for travel advisors.  

The idea behind it is to automate the process of finding an advisor, while also giving advisors an easier way to work with their clients.  

Right now, only advisors under the Nicer banner have access to the tech. Once an advisor onboards with Nicer, they can be matched with travelers who downloaded the app themselves or have their current download the app and connect with them. 

“From Google searches to simply using their phones to order groceries, the tolerance for manual processes is diminishing over time for consumers,“ Stone told TMR, adding that she and many other advisors “are really seeking a more modern approach to how they run their agency” that is more appealing to the next generation of travelers. 

Nicer aims to offer that solution with a quick sign-up process for clients and a profile to fill out that helps the system match them and their desired trip to the advisor who will make it happen. 

Advisors have been using the platform since February. There are now 35 advisors affiliated with Nicer, which functions as their host agency and offers them an itinerary builder, booking engine, and digital wallet.  

But the main draw is the centralized means of connection that advisors have with their clients through the platform, which offers built-in chat feature and will soon have AI capabilities.  

“They don’t want the back and forth, they want to book it and forget about it,“ Kelly Eisenman, a Los Angeles travel advisor using Nicer, told TMR. “This makes it so much more seamless for both me and the traveler.” 

Though still in its early stages, Nicer has a board populated by several industry leaders from Internova Travel Group, Trip Ventures, Microsoft, and others. It’s also secured some serious funding – Nicer announced in February that it raised $2 million in pre-seed funding. 

“Travelers have a lot of choices these days, so we want to make sure finding a travel advisor is just as easy as all the other things they do with their phones throughout the day. “If we can do that, our advisors can be successful as well.”