On-line tourism attracts investments to the country
Valor Econômico
Plannig the trip of your dreams is becoming easier and easier. The tourists-to-be still have to run after promotional packages and other accommodation details, but this search can become less tiring and cheaper with the on-line services of reservation of tickets and hotels. The offer of this kind of service through the Internet is not new, but it is becoming popular in Brazil with the investments several groups have announced in the country recently.
That is the case of the American group Expedia, one of the biggest of the sector all over the world. Owner of the Hotels.com website, the group announced the opening of an office in the country last week. The site already had a Portuguese version for five years, but so far its content was basically a translation of the American webpage. With the local operation, the purpose of Hotels.com is to end 2009 with earnings of R$ 20 million (US$ 11 million) and a team of 30 professionals of its own, besides 100 outsourced employees for telephone service. Today, half of the sales in Brazil is made by phone, twice the world average.
In the end of July, the Decolar.com group, headquartered in Argentina, also strengthened its businesses in Brazil. With an investment of US$ 3 million, the company reformulated the area aimed at on-line reservations in the country. The movement shows the special interest of the company in the Brazilian market: from the 11 operations of the site, the Brazilian one will be the only with its own team of professionals.
Even the Brazilian Association of the Hotel Industry (Abih Nacional) plans on launching a site aimed at the activity. The expectation is that the portal should be up by the end of the year. The projection of the entity is that between 30% and 35% of its 3 thousand members start offering services through the site. According to Alexandre Sampaio, director of the entity, the movement is influenced by three basic points: the maturing of the use of the Internet in the country, the perception on the part of the hotels that the use of technology helps in the most efficient management of the business and the necessity of reducing the role of the intermediaries in the chain of the sector.
Joaquin Tamez, VP of Hotels.com for Latin America, estimates that up to 40% of the reservations made by Brazilian users are made through the Internet. The number includes the reservation of hotels outside the country. For the purpose of comparison, he says that 70% of the airplane tickets are sold by this channel, which shows the potential of the segment. Until the end of 2010, the expectation is that Brazil represents 50% of the earnings of Hotels.com in Latin America. Tamez says that so far 120 thousand transactions were made by Brazilian users in the five years of operation. This year alone the number has already reached 30 thousand operations.