Tern Acquires Lucia, Bringing Contractor Marketplace Under Its Platform

Tern on Wednesday announced the acquisition of Lucia, a contractor marketplace specializing in travel industry freelancers. As part of the agreement, Lucia founder Grace Van Hollebeke will join Tern as head of marketing and user experience. The deal marks Tern’s first acquisition since its founding.

The move gives Tern users access to Lucia’s network of “CoPilots”—vetted, travel-trained virtual assistants, marketing specialists, and customer service professionals. Users can hire them directly through the platform on a pay-as-you-go basis, with no subscription fees or additional platform costs.

Lucia will now operate as Lucia by Tern, a name the company is keeping to reinforce that CoPilots are independent contractors, not Tern employees. The network currently includes about 350 active freelancers—95% of whom are based in the United States, with the rest in Canada, Europe, the Philippines, South America and South Africa.

All CoPilots are vetted and require industry experience.

“They have to be travel industry people—it’s a requirement,” Van Hollebeke said.

Van Hollebeke told TMR that the most in-demand CoPilot services include administrative tasks such as CRM setup and system transitions—support that aligns closely with Tern’s user needs and those looking to onboard to a system like Tern—along with social media and marketing help.

Why Tern and Why Lucia

Van Hollebeke founded Lucia in 2022 to provide travel advisors with skilled freelance support from professionals who understand how the industry works. Her previous experience was also in the industry, founding TripKit, which she sold to a family office in 2022.

Van Hollebeke said the decision to join Tern followed a serendipitous meeting during the Travel Agent Forum in Las Vegas—and a dinner invitation from Tern CEO David Shull.

“This is the first company I’ve ever really worked for,” she said. “But I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. What sold me was David’s genuine desire to grow Lucia within Tern. From a founder’s perspective, there’s nothing better.”

Shull echoed the sentiment.

“We had just closed our Series A, and a few days later, one of our investors asked if we had thought more about services,” he told TMR. “It couldn’t have been a clearer sign that we should call Grace.”

Shull said that while the acquisition strengthens Tern’s service offerings, a big part of the draw was bringing Van Hollebeke onto the team.

“As a founder, when you meet incredible people, you want to find a way to work with them,” he said.

Internal surveys at Tern showed that the top two challenges limiting advisor growth are marketing and administrative workload.

“Most advisors said they didn’t have time to train someone new,” Shull said. “More than half told us that having someone already trained on Tern would be incredibly helpful.”

With the acquisition, Tern is also expanding beyond typical tech services to better help travel advisors grow their businesses.

“At the highest level, we wake up every day thinking about how to help travel entrepreneurs maximize their impact,” he said. “Now we’re expanding beyond tech to offer more holistic support—helping advisors identify the right kind of help at the right time, and enabling greater efficiency and collaboration.”

Looking ahead, Shull said his vision is simple: “We want to help advisors sell more, earn more, and spend less time on the backend—and be the behind-the-scenes player that makes it all work.”