Travel Tech in paradise

Joelma Martins, Ronier Fernandes and their Sao Paulo – based travel tech consulting firm ITtO represent Umbrella in Brazil and other Latin American countries. What a huge market this is. And what a beautiful part of the world they live in!

Why is the Brazilian travel market so special? What are the opportunities and pitfalls?

And what is the most wonderful Brazilian dream destination that only very few, lucky Europeans get to see?

Here are the answers - in our interview with our Brazilian travel tech gurus from ITtO:

Joelma, Ronier, let’s start right away with the most burning question I have: what is your top secret magic holiday destination in Brazil?
Oh dear, there are so many to choose from…Did you know that Brazil is 24 times the size of Germany? Among the top spots are definitely the amazing sand dunes of Lencois Maranhenses, the area of Bonito in the Pantanal swamps and the Iguacu Falls in the state of Parana.

But if we need to make one choice only, we absolutely recommend you to visit the islands of Fernando de Noronha. Baia do Sancho has been named by Tripadvisor as the most beautiful beach in the world. The whole group of islands is a strongly protected sanctuary and has an incredible biodiversity. Travelling there is absolutely safe, but you have to be aware that authorities only allow a limited number of visitors. Therefore, you need to arrange your travels way in advance!

Beautiful! Let’s stay with travel, but change to the business version of it: What are the biggest travel management challenges for Brazilian companies?
Well, efficiency is always a major issue in Brazil. And there is still very little understanding of how to integrate all business travel processes – from budgeting to booking, expense management and accounting. But the good news is: we at ITtO can fix that. Tools like UMBRELLA FACES or booking tools like ARGO help us a lot to create a smooth and effective business travel management experience for our customers.

What about TMCs? What are their challenges?
TMCs in Brazil have to handle a huge number of frontends and processes with different providers. This is because we have a much higher share of non-GDS content than in Europe or the US. In European terms, this would mean that airlines like Ryanair or Wizzair account for 70% of the bookings! You can imagine how much manual labor this creates!

As anywhere else in the world, the cost pressure on TMCs increases substantially. And tech providers like SAP or Amadeus are aggressively approaching large corporations directly. Consequently, TMCs need to be able to deliver end-to-end solutions. But they rarely have the necessary expertise and resources for proper business consulting and project management. ITtO can – and does – help the TMCs to provide more effective services to our clients.

How does ITtO help its customers?
In a nutshell: We make things work! As an independent and neutral consulting firm, we help corporations to improve travel management efficiency and control, in its entire life-cycle. That saves a lot of time and money. That’s why CFOs and travel managers love to work with us to protect their company´s interests.

Who are your customers?
We work mostly with large corporations, from all kinds of industries.

What is really unique at ITtO?
We work on a pure success-based fee model. Our customers only pay if we achieve tangible, hard-currency results.

This sounds excellent! Your clients can only win! Thank you so much for your time – and we wish you tons of success in the years to come