How Kest Gregeris built Travel Visa Pros around customer accountability
Kest Gregeris is CEO, Founder and Owner of Travel Visa Pros, a travel-document expediting company serving businesses, institutions, partners and travelers with urgent or complex needs. The conversation explores how taking document processing in-house shaped the business, and why reliable operations and human oversight still matter as travel requirements become more digital.
A business can outsource tasks, but it remains responsible for the customer’s experience. For complex, deadline-driven services, reliable operations, quality checks and control over delivery are essential to earning trust.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
Travel Visa Pro is a people-powered travel-document expediting company serving businesses, institutions, service-provider partners and travelers with urgent or complex needs. I founded the company in 2006, initially specializing in visas for Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other countries in the region. Since then, we’ve handled more than 1 million cases spanning visas, U.S. passports, apostilles, legalizations and translations.
What sets us apart is the combination of experienced people, physical infrastructure and technology. We operate nine offices in eight major U.S. cities and more than 200 Authorized Locations nationwide, and we’re registered with five U.S. Department of State regional passport agencies. That lets our own team handle original documents in person and step in around the clock when a trip is at risk.
Everything we do comes back to one mission: No client should ever miss their trip. This year marks our 20th anniversary, and we’ve upheld that mission the entire time by simplifying complicated processes while keeping control of service quality and the customer experience.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
Our first customers were other agencies that relied on us for Russian visa processing, so Travel Visa Pro was built on business-to-business relationships from the start. From there, we gradually expanded into U.S. passports and a broader range of documentation services.
In many ways, we were a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) company from day one, even before the term was widely used. Today, our new business comes from corporate clients, universities, law firms, travel service providers and distribution partners, as well as direct retail customers.
Our channels have evolved considerably over the years, and partnerships are now our fastest-growing area, but the underlying principle remains the same.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
The decision that changed our direction was to vertically integrate our operations and open nine offices across eight major U.S. cities.
It grew out of the mistake that taught us the most. Early on, we relied on other passport and visa expediters to hand-carry our customers’ documents to government agencies and foreign consulates. To them, we were often just another client, but to our customers, we were the company responsible for delivering results.
When something went wrong, we were accountable for a process we didn’t control. So rather than depend on middlemen, we hired our own staff and built the ability to work directly with government agencies and consulates.
The lesson was simple: You can outsource a task, but you cannot outsource your responsibility to the customer.
It wasn’t the easiest or cheapest way to grow, but it’s the reason Travel Visa Pro controls processing, service quality and the customer experience from start to finish.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
One of the biggest changes is the rise of digital travel-document requirements.
Years ago, international travel revolved around physical passports and paper visas. Today, travelers may also need e-visas, electronic travel authorizations, QR codes, digital arrival and departure cards, biometric registrations and other destination-specific approvals.
Technology has simplified some steps but added new layers of complexity. Even when a visa is issued electronically, travelers may need additional documentation to board a flight or enter a country, and many processes still require original documents and in-person submission. At the same time, customers expect more speed, convenience and comprehensive service. They don’t want separate providers for visas, apostilles, translations and other supporting documents.
We’ve responded by broadening our services and investing in technology while maintaining the physical infrastructure and around-the-clock human expertise needed for complex or urgent cases.
We’ve also invested in information security. Protecting the sensitive personal information and identity documents we handle has always been central to our operations, and as we’ve grown, we’ve formalized those practices around recognized frameworks, including GDPR requirements and SOC 2 Type II readiness. That’s increasingly important as we serve larger corporate customers and partners with more demanding security expectations.
I believe the future of our industry combines digital convenience with knowledgeable human oversight, especially when something doesn’t go according to plan.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
First, understand the operational process before investing heavily in marketing or technology.
It’s easy to build a website that accepts passport or visa applications. It’s much harder to build a business that consistently delivers what it promises, especially when government agencies, consulates, changing regulations and strict deadlines are involved.
Focus on operational reliability, customer trust and quality control. In our industry, rules can change overnight, and you may need to adapt within hours.
Over 20 years, we’ve also learned the importance of redundancy. A second review of an application or a second check of original documents can make all the difference. There’s no such thing as too much quality assurance when you’re handling people’s passports, personal information and travel plans.
Think beyond a single service, too. Customers want one provider that can solve the entire documentation problem, not just one piece of it. As for what to ignore: The temptation to compete solely on price, promise unrealistic processing times or sacrifice quality for volume.
Technology can help you move faster, but it cannot replace accountability, attention to detail and a second set of eyes when it matters most.
Thank you to Kest Gregeris and the team at Travel Visa Pros for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
Want to tell the story behind your business?
Leaders Perception publishes interviews with business owners and leaders every week. Five questions, about ten minutes, no calls. It is free and every completed interview gets published.