In January 2016, CVC, Brazil’s largest tour operator, announced that it was forgoing participation in trade shows and travel fairs in the country for at least a year. “We have much affection for these fairs, but we decided to invest in exclusive events CVC this year in regional meetings where travel agents will meet our customers to talk about sales, destination, seasons …” Valter Patriani, the company’s vice president, told Panrotas, the country’s top travel trade publication and website.
Even so, the company’s absence at the 2017 ABAV (Association of Brazilian Travel Agents) International Expo Sept. 27-29 at the Expo Center Norte in Sao Paulo touched a raw nerve in the Brazilian travel trade, and brought to the surface a hostility toward the travel giant, which has suffered not a whit during Brazil’s ongoing economic crisis.
An editorial in Diario do Turismo, a widely read online Brazilian tourism journal, shows what one might describe as contempt toward, and jealously of, the nation’s most successful travel company. The English translation (Beware: It’s a Google translation) of the editorial below was tweaked in a few places by the Inbound Report. For an exact rendering of the editorial, we recommend the original Portuguese version: http://diariodoturismo.com.br/por-que-cvc-nao-participou-da-expo-abav-2017/
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Why Didn’t CVC Participate in Expo-Abav 2017?
By Daily Editorial Board
Brazil’s largest tourism operator, CVC, did not participate in the Expo-ABAV 2017 and pulled others by the hand, for a variety of reasons, but let’s focus on the CVC’s reasons.
It comes from the understanding of who is working for tourism and in the tourism the absence of this operator in the Expo-ABAV and the silence shrieking of all. No one answered the question: Why didn’t CVC participate in Expo-Abav 2017?
Here we have one of the answers: Because it puts itself in a very quiet position; it is a listed company whose results are measured by the success of its executives who are remunerated through bonuses for the economy they make and the dividends they give to their shareholders.
How much did they save? 500 thousand (reais)¹? Perhaps. The argument—perhaps grounded, perhaps bored—is that the model of the fair is outdated and that the moment of crisis² does not allow spending … Crisis? What crisis? There may be a crisis in the industry, real estate, construction, political crisis, but there is no crisis in leisure travel. The great equipment, the big market players are tied in complex national and international sales systems and sales are at full steam ….
CVC has a very high level of financial resources, so much that it has a list of companies that it wants to buy, already with the release of CADE (Administrative Council of Economic Defense). It has already acquired Trend Operator, bought Submarino, bought Rextur, and with that, has all the travel agents in hand. With this absence CVC shows little caring for tourism and for the tourism sector …
There are commercial reasons the company can even accept and consider. But where are the institutional reasons of the company? Its founder, Guilherme Paulus holds a seat in the National Tourism Council but he was not a part of the authorities table at the opening of Abav-Expo 2017, last Wednesday (Sept. 27). Is this really the case? Should not the king be questioned?
Pretend it was Not
The company’s business is a thousand an hour and that they do not need a fair to earn more or sell more, you can understand, but it’s hard to accept.
CVC is expanding the scope of its franchises through Brazil at a cost of 100 thousand (reais)³ of investment per new store. The municipality is satisfied when it opens a CVC travel agency within its territorial boundaries. But are you happy for what? These agencies arrive to send tourists out and not to import tourists. It is precisely the economic model of business concentration that makes Brazil skid in its development of truth. An unequal model, and nothing sustainable. How (do we pretend) it was not.
¹ About $157,000
² Brazil’s two-year-old economic recession—the worst in a century for the country—is frequently referred to simply as “The Crisis.”
³ $31,000
