Ricardo Ferreira
Keeping pace with Brazil's economic growth, Grupo Alatur Viagens & Turismo has grown to become one of Latin America's largest travel management companies, with more than 1,050 employees across five divisions that include HRG Brasil, corporate travel, meetings and training. As part of a 2009 strategic agreement, Alatur took over HRG Brasil as HRG Worldwide secured minority ownership in the São Paulo-based company. Alatur vice president Ricardo Ferreira talked to The Transnationalabout how travel management and his business have changed in recent years as Brazil's economic fortunes have grown and become more closely tied to China, the Middle East and Africa. An excerpt follows.
How is the growth of Brazil's economy impacting your business?
We have 150-to-180 companies where 50 percent or more of their revenues come from abroad. So these are Brazilian multinational companies. We've always been dependent on getting business from the primary markets: England, Germany, Japan, the United States, etc., with Brazil as the feeder market. Now Brazil is a primary market. With HRG Brasil, about 50 percent of the volume is now generated within Brazil and the other 50 percent from multinationals served by HRG. For example, Petrobras just did a share sale and technically became one of the largest companies in the world. That's one visible company, but behind that are all sorts of Brazilian companies where 50 percent of revenues come from outside Brazil. I was talking to HRG India and the same thing happened there. India started having all these large national companies go global. The same thing is occurring in China. How do you run a worldwide program in human resources or travel? How these born-national companies go global is a recipe that is not yet ready.
As these companies have expanded globally, has the number of travel managers in Brazil and Latin America been increasing?
No, I would say that companies have done the full learning cycle. They know what travel management is. Companies have learned to deal with managed travel programs, and now they think they can do it better if they incorporate the travel function with other responsibilities. I took a group of 13 Brazilian travel managers in 1992 to the Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference in San Antonio. We are running an article and picture about this group and what happened to all of them 18 years later in our company magazine as part of a look at the past and future of travel management. Most of them are still in travel, but none are occupying travel management functions in companies or with the companies that they were originally with 18 years ago. Yes, 18 years is a long time, but there's also a story. My perception is that decisions--big decisions--have gone up, and execution has gone to the analyst level or supervisor level. These large companies know what to do in travel. Those travel managers who look at their functionality as compliance or working with agreements have had a hard time. Many were fired or had a difficult time relocating themselves. Those who have done well are the ones who ask, "What is corporate mobility in my company? How do people move about?" We have three [travel manager customers] who take care of expatriates and alternatives to travel. They look at the functionality, not at the job description.
Do many of your customers now refer to travel management as mobility management?
No, I'm a trendsetter. Travel management is a facility. When you talk about mobility, it is something that will be essential to company strategies in the future. Chinese company Huawei Technologies has 300 people working in Brazil. The Schuler Group signed an agreement with Volkswagen to send 300 or 400 [Brazilian] people in the next 12 months to Iran, outside Tehran, to construct a plant. These are nice, employed Brazilian people, and they'll live south of Tehran for three or four months. They don't stay in hotels. They need their Brazilian diets of rice, beans, chicken and macaroni. Through us, the companies prepare not only the workers, but their families, to deal with all this.
That is your job now?
Yes, that is one of our creative jobs. I'm just giving you an example of the world evolving into mobility. We just have the one job, but we're trying to develop another one. When you go into a company and say, "I think I can help you with this," that is much different than just average ticket prices or transactions. I ask, "Where is the future of the agency? Where do we want to be in three years' time, in five years' time?" A competitor of ours has done something crazy to handle a specific account for the whole region--the whole of Latin America--out of one country. Everyone says this is crazy. But what if he gets it right? The essence of innovation is that you take risks. If he's right, you don't have to coordinate service in 19 different countries or wait for data from 19 countries. Within Latin America, the Spanish that is spoken is different in various countries, the language is different, and the evolution of travel is completely different. But someone who devises a solution to ignore the discrepancies that exist from country to country to say, "I'll operate just one center for an entire region" has a competitive advantage. It is the transaction paradigm taken to the next level.
What technology tools are embraced in Brazil to help companies better manage travel?
The big wave we are seeing in Brazil is online booking: About 37 percent of companies have some sort of online tool. I bet the next wave of innovation will be expense tools. When it comes to expense management, we are at inertia. Meeting technology right now, we're not yet in inertia. We are at the beginning of the curve on that.