December 15th, 2025
Having recently spoken with Vanessa Karel, founder of Greether, the conversation revealed more than a simple travel service.
A moment that changed everything
Vanessa’s urgency didn’t begin with market research or a strategy session. It began in a moment of real need. “The urgency began when I desperately needed it to exist,” she says. Travelling alone in Morocco, she found herself in a frightening situation and realised what she wanted most wasn’t a tour or an app, it was “someone trustworthy, a local to rely on or to even just text questions, let them know I was safe.” After searching for female guides and finding none, she finally connected with a woman in Chefchaouen. “That moment completely shifted how I experienced travel.”
Writing a book after those trips led Vanessa to speak with more than 500 female travellers. “I realised that I wasn’t alone,” she says. Women shared the same gaps and the same readiness to pay for solutions that feel respectful and practical. That was the point when Greether moved from idea to imperative: a way to turn a single, important connection into something every woman could reach.
A local best friend, not a scripted tour
Vanessa constructed this concept into the form of a Greeter, a trusted local who can operate as both tour guide and companion. “It means you’re not just meeting someone who knows the city, you’re meeting someone who cares about you, your wellbeing and how you experience her hometown,” she explains. Greether does not sell scripted tours. It recreates the kind of visit you have when you show up at a friend’s city home and they take you to a café, a quiet park, the sunset spot only locals know.
That “bestie” quality is what Vanessa calls travel luck: those unplanned, unforgettable encounters where a stranger becomes part of your story. Greether makes that luck intentional. “We vet the strangers you trust, we give you access to them before your trip so you can build some ground with them before you land,” Vanessa says. The result is personalised time with someone who can advise on neighbourhoods, transport and cultural norms, practicalities that matter differently to women. The offer is small but vital: someone who’s got your back.
Scaling without losing the soul
Greether now reaches more than a thousand cities and that growth taught Vanessa something unexpected. She thought the platform would focus on destinations women regarded as risky. Instead, travellers book Greeters everywhere, from Reykjavik to Seoul. “My mission hasn’t changed but how our female travelers utilize our platform has evolved, even better than what I imagined it would,” she says. Expansion has become a way to widen access to meaningful travel, not dilute the purpose.
For Vanessa, the measure of growth is clear: “When you keep humanity front and center, growth doesn’t dilute the mission — it amplifies it.” The practical commitment behind that line is economic: creating jobs for local women and supporting businesses that benefit communities. Technology helps them scale, but the heart of Greether remains the women who welcome others into their cities.
Safety as the foundation of curiosity
Safety is not framed as fear but as an enabler of exploration. Vanessa’s lived experience, growing up largely in Mexico City, living in San Francisco and travelling widely has taught her how different a place can feel depending on what you know. “I do not believe in dangerous places,” she says. “I think that there are unfortunately dangerous people in the corners of the world, but to our fortune, the majority of humans are well intentioned.”
Still, Greether treats safety as an anchor. “There is no company in the world that can say someone or somewhere is 100% safe, but we are taking so many steps to reduce risks for women,” Vanessa explains. The aim is not to shrink women’s worlds but to expand them. To bring the joy back into travel by giving women the confidence to explore more boldly.
A feeling before a product
When asked what she wants women to feel the first time they meet Greether, Vanessa returns to a single word that emerged from a survey of more than a thousand travellers: “freedom.” She hopes women feel proud to travel intentionally, mindful of local culture and respectful in their movements. “Using Greether makes them a better traveler,” she says, not in a moralising way, but in a grounded one: more aware, more connected and more curious.
Where next
Recognition has followed the work with Greether being named Travel Startup of the Year at WTM. But Vanessa is clear about the purpose behind the applause. “I didn’t build Greether to be recognized,” she says. She built it so no woman would abandon a dream destination for lack of company and so local women could earn meaningful income from their knowledge. The road ahead includes B2B partnerships and deeper integrations with brands that finally see the need for women-centred services. For Vanessa, that momentum signals something larger: “The world is ready for this shift, for safer, more authentic, women-centred travel.”
The ripple effect
Greether asks a simple question with wide implications: what changes when travel is designed around trust, not just convenience? Vanessa’s answer is both practical and moral. It creates work for women, it encourages responsible tourism, and it rewires how strangers become part of one another’s lives. In an industry that has long overlooked women’s needs, Greether offers a different frame. Travel that expands the world, one human connection at a time.
Written by Robert Williams. Created by Jessica Marwood.
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