Lori Gold: From Toronto Travel Advisor to Mexico’s Go-To Expert for the Trade

Lori Gold never planned to become one of the most trusted Mexico resources in the travel industry. In fact, she called herself an “accidental entrepreneur” when she launched her company Explore More Mexico.

But over the past decade, nearly all of it spent with boots on the ground in Mexico, she has built an informative, advisor-first community that now supports tens of thousands of travel advisors across Canada and beyond.

Born and raised in Toronto, Gold didn’t study travel in school — she went to university because “that’s just what you did,” and earned a sociology degree. Her first trip was to Miami, where her family owned a beachfront condo. She says that early exposure to the sun and warmth of the beach left a lasting impression.

“I don’t even know if it was the love of travel at first,” she says. “I loved the beach, the warmth, just being somewhere that wasn’t Toronto, especially in winter.”

She thought about becoming a flight attendant, but instead a family friend who owned a local travel agency opened another door. Gold was hired while still in university and began her career the old-fashioned way: as an assistant in a bricks-and-mortar agency.

“I wish everyone had to do that,” she says. “Learning by listening to other advisors, hearing how they solve problems, that kind of in-person experience is irreplaceable.”

In 2009, early in her career and before she had even built a significant client base, Gold was invited to attend the Karisma Awards in Mexico. It was her first all-inclusive resort experience and her first trip to Mexico.

“It completely changed my life,” she says.

She fell in love not just with the resort brand, but with Mexico itself: the culture, the people, and the destination’s diversity. When she returned home, she began selling Mexico “like crazy,” quickly becoming a top-performing advisor for the region. Frequent invitations followed for FAMs, awards trips, and incentive stays.

Though she sold destinations around the world, Gold became known for Mexico and the Caribbean, investing heavily in firsthand experience. In 2016, after a short transition period in Miami, she left the cold winters of Toronto behind and made a permanent move to Mexico.

Nearly ten years later, she’s still there.

By 2020, she was a well-established Mexico specialist living in destination. When resorts began reopening during the pandemic, she started conducting site inspections to understand new health protocols and operational changes. As she shared her findings in various Facebook groups, she noticed a problem: duplication.

“I felt like I was spamming people,” she recalls. “So I thought, why not just create my own group?”

That group quickly grew. What started as a practical solution became a lifeline during COVID and a series of severe hurricanes that followed. Advisors with clients in destination relied on real-time, on-the-ground updates, often from other agents within the community.

At the same time, many advisors who had never sold Mexico suddenly had no choice but to learn it. Cruise specialists, Disney sellers, and Asia-focused advisors all needed support. Gold responded by launching virtual training — initially as a one-off, then as structured paid classes.

In 2022, she made a pivotal decision to stop selling travel entirely and focus full-time on education, community, and resources for the trade.

Today, Gold runs one of the industry’s most active Mexico-focused advisor communities, with approximately 28,000 agents in her free Facebook group and around 5,000 advisors in her paid membership program, Mexperts. She also offers a free, 2 hour course on the Mexican Caribbean through Explore More Mexico.

What sets it apart is its practicality. Resources are built directly from the questions advisors ask every day. Agent Guides break down resorts by ideal client, beach conditions, top selling points, drawbacks, and critical booking details. “Perfect Itineraries” allow advisors to look like destination experts, even if they haven’t yet visited.

Every week, Gold and her team comb through hundreds of posts, reviews, and site inspection reports to produce a curated roundup of what matters most; turning scattered information into usable sales tools.

“This is the stuff that’s so hard to find,” she says. “Resorts don’t always make the small-but-critical details easy to access, and those details can make or break a booking.”

Despite offering one of the most comprehensive digital Mexico resources available, Gold remains a staunch advocate for firsthand experience.

“There’s nothing that replaces being there,” she says. “Even if you can only come for four nights, stay at two resorts, do site inspections, see as much as possible. Your confidence with clients changes completely.”

It’s advice she lives by. Gold continues to conduct site inspections weekly and estimates she has seen more all-inclusive resorts in the Mexican Caribbean than almost anyone in the industry. Her goal: to personally visit every single mainland all-inclusive resort.

With a small team supporting her, Gold’s focus for the coming year is refinement, not reinvention: expanding agent guides and itineraries to cover every resort, launching long-planned resources for Mexico’s islands, and keeping information relentlessly up to date in a destination that never stops changing.

“I never expected to do any of this,” she says. “But I’m happier now than I ever was selling travel—and I know I’m helping more people.”