In The Big Chair - Juan Pablo Lafosse of Almundo

It's been more than five years since you rejoined the company you originally founded in 1992. What have you learned along the way as the company has transitioned from an offline travel agency to one that is both offline and online?

I've learned that what is important is to solve our customers' problems, and there are different ways to do that - both online and offline. There are different types of customers and different types of trips, and if you are capable of using both online and offline channels and tools your value proposition is wider and better. When you put together technology and people, the results in terms of conversion, lifetime value, net promoter score and revenue increase.

How much of Almundo’s business is currently coming from its brick-and-mortar outlets versus from online transactions? And how do you see that evolving in the future? Will there always be a role for offline agencies?

Right now the mix is approximately 50/50. I believe this mix will maintain in the future, as online travel will probably grow more but our share on offline channels will increase more as well.

Pure online is a bloody battlefield, focused mainly on price, with too many players and lots of suppliers investing heavily to compete for the same customers. Omnichannel players have better margins, better ROI on market and higher engagement with their customers. In the future I don't see boundaries between online and offline as we see today.

What are the strengths of a brand such as Almundo versus larger global players such as Booking and Expedia?

First of all we offer our customers offline channels that they don't; we also offer local content and curated content that they don't have available. There is also a big difference on the payment options. We better know our customers and their preferences. We understand what they want, how to communicate with them, etc. We believe that we can generate a different type of engagement than a big global player that needs to standardize its communication and operation to play on very different markets.

What are your thoughts on Google’s continued development of travel products?

Google has such an amount of data and resources that they can become every day much more relevant on the travel space. I am pretty sure that they will continue moving down the funnel and become a merchant in a near future.

Where do you see the biggest opportunities for growth for Almundo in the next decade?

I believe that expanding our omnichannel model will be part of our strategy, but where I see a bigger opportunity is in using our technology to create a real travel marketplace connecting a lot of travel players, travel experts and suppliers with our customers. I am confident that this business model that we are developing will be extremely successful and will help us to capture a significant share of the travel market.

Since 2015, Almundo has been a subsidiary of Spain-based Iberostar Group. Can you explain a how that relationship functions  - how involved is Iberostar Group in your day-to-day operations?

Iberostar is Almundo's investor and its majority stockholder but there are not many interactions on our day-to-day operations. Each company has its own strategy and we have totally separate teams and processes.

Almundo has a partnership with a technology company, Vrtify, to develop its Vravel virtual reality platform for travel content. How is Almundo making use of this technology?

Besides the fact that today this is not part of our core business we see that in the coming future VR and AR will become extremely relevant on travel.

In addition to virtual reality, what other emerging technologies do you think will have the biggest impact on the travel industry?

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence is becoming every day much more strategic on our industry and this will increase and accelerate. I see AI as the biggest thing in terms of impact.

I also believe that blockchain will help to build platforms and collaborative business models that will rely on smart contracts. Probably augment reality will also help to totally change the in-destination experiences.

In the last couple of years, Almundo has expanded beyond Argentina to Mexico and Colombia (2016) and Brazil (2018). What is the status of your business operations in those countries and do you have to use different strategies in different countries?

We have taken the decision to start our operation in these countries through an online strategy, and now that we have built our brand and we better understand the markets, we are starting to move into the omnichannel model that we have developed in Argentina, converting travel agencies into Almundo franchises. We will also be launching Almundo marketplace on these markets in the coming future.

What are your thoughts about expanding Almundo beyond Latin America?

This is an industry in which scale is mandatory. In order to invest in technology and innovation you need scale. And we believe that in a few years there are only going to exist big global players and local niche players. Almundo wants to be one of the big players. And this means that we will not only need to be a relevant player in Latin America, but also we need to expand beyond our region. And we will.

Have you learned anything from watching how global brands such as Booking and Expedia have expanded into new regions?

Every day we learn new things from the big global brands. I guess what is remarkable from both Expedia and Booking is the balance they find between execution and innovation. Besides their size they have the ability to change. They are capable of defining new strategies every year and execute them.

Before coming back to Almundo in 2013, you founded a hospitality company, Hostel Suites, and also served as an executive at Aerolíneas Argentinas. How have those experiences helped you?

It helped me to better understand the supplier point of view and that pushed me to create a culture within Almundo where we consider both suppliers and travelers as customers. Our everyday duty is to create value for both type of customers. I find that view sometimes is missing in our industry. And we see that there is a lot of energy focused on competition instead of collaboration between suppliers and travel agencies.

Having been a young entrepreneur in the travel industry yourself when you founded Asatej in 1992, what is your advice to young travel professionals today?

That nothing you feel proud of in the future will have been achieved without passion and effort. And without a team of good, impassioned and talented people. Never on human history there was a generation with so many tools to create value and transform the way people travel. Let's take advantage of this amazing opportunity.