Brazil—For the Real, is “up” the Only Way to go?

When delegates to the World Travel Market (WTM) gathered a year ago, the buzz among those who work the Brazil market centered around the slide of the Brazilian Real. While the currency and the national economy were weak, few speculated that the economy would sink into the worst recession in a half century or that the real would grow even weaker, plummeting in value against other global currencies. The real opened this week, as WTM convened in London, at $0.259—a decline of 35.7 percent against the U.S. dollar at the same point last year. The table below tracks the month-by-month weakening of the currency.

November 2014 to November 2015

Other economic markers are, to say the least, not encouraging.  News reports tell us that the nation’s unemployment increased to 8.7 percent of the working population in August. That’s an increase from 6.5 percent rate of last November. Overall, the Brazilian economy remained static in 2014, expanding by just 0.1 percent. And, for 2015, it is expected to contract by 3 percent.

Meanwhile … CVC is Clearly the Top Travel Brand in Brazil: When Brazilians think travel agency, they first think “CVC.”  That’s the report from top-of-mind-research recently conducted by the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, using statistics from Datafolha. CVC—its majority owner is the Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C.-based venture capital firm—had a 19 percent brand awareness index when survey respondents were asked about travel agencies. This is two percent more than last year. This marked the fifth consecutive year that CVC has ranked first among travel agency brands. The two tables below show the top four brands in travel agency and airline categories.

Top Brazilian Brands—Travel Agency Category

Top Brazilian Brands—Airline Category