A Full House at the whl.travel CASA Regional Office

whl.travel
18 May 2009

The whl.travel office for Central and South America (CASA) is located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Like the other whl.travel regional offices in Cape Town (South Africa), Miami, Florida (USA) and Sydney (Australia), CASA supervises sales for the expansion of the whl.travel network throughout the territory it oversees and works together with its local franchise partners to maintain an effective presence.

The core CASA team includes Adrian, Vitor, Ramon, Wallace and André.

The Team

Adrian has been with whl.travel since late 2005, first as a content editor but then progressing to content manager and now executive director of the CASA regional office. With a strong interest in both independent travel and social issues, Adrian sees working with whl.travel as a logical choice. After all, travel has been a constant throughout his life; he has lived in places as varied as Nigeria, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as Brazil, which he now calls home (for the time being). Adrian is also whl.travel’s global affiliate manager, securing strategic partnerships with like-minded organisations and helping to drive business to local whl.travel partners throughout the world.

Vitor started as an intern but also rose quickly through the whl.travel ranks. He now leads the whl.travel programme-development charge in Central and South America, together with his partners Ramon and Wallace. As a co-founder and director of Intex Soluções em Turismo, a Brazilian company promoting innovation in tourism, Vitor also helps to run the Belo Horizonte, Diamantina and Serro websites in Minas Gerais state.

Vitor is also helping to promote WHL Consulting initiatives in the region and build capacity for small travel operators, as well as creating better and more sustainable destinations, all while reinforcing the “real” travel experience. He recently had the opportunity to act as a consultant in South Africa and Zambia and is very excited about rolling out the first projects in Latin America.

Ramon started very early with his entrepreneurial spirit, as, before getting involved in the tourism industry, he managed his own furniture business. He has also managed some of the most famous bars and restaurants in Belo Horizonte, a city known as the Bar Capital of Brazil, and acted as a general consultant in this area as well.

Ramon’s background in tourism includes studies in urban tourism planning and work in tourism development in some municipalities of Minas Gerais state, Brazil. With Vitor and Wallace, Ramon is a co-founder of Intex Soluções em Turismo. He is now the sales and marketing coordinator for whl.travel and responsible for finding the best possible partners in each destination of the CASA region.

Wallace is a graduate in Tourism Planning and also a passionate hitchhiker. During his studies he developed several tourism products for the Tourism Circuits of Minas Gerais state. He is responsible for project management of all Central and South American sites. In addition to training, his main focus is keep the whl.travel local partners connected with all the e-commerce tools and knowledge that are crucial for their business success.

André, the newest whl.travel team member, just completed his degree in Tourism at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. During his education, he was fortunate enough to go to the United States, where he did a one-year Internship at the Vail Marriott Mountain Resort & Spa in Colorado. After that, he flew to Canada for a one-year work experience, also in hotel management, at the Delta Sun Peaks Resort in British Columbia. “I’m a world citizen,” he claims, as he feels he has a natural passion for travelling and different cultures.

“He had shown a curiosity for the whl.travel business model since we first met him at our Tourism classes at UFMG,” says Wallace. André subsequently applied for an internship with whl.travel and has been working closely with the regional local partners with advice and tips about Web marketing and search-engine optimisation, and generally helping them out with the management of their e-commerce businesses.

Busy Times

The whl.travel CASA team supports a growing number of live and trading sites, most of which are in Brazil. However, the wide-open market in South America is responding well to whl.travel searches for more local partners with practices in line with those espoused by whl.travel. Strong sales mean that an new sites for destinations throughout the continent are presently under construction, with more likely to follow in the months ahead. Even as the field of partners expands, however, the team will work closely with those already active to ensure that the swift pace of whl.travel development of brings new opportunities to everyone.

Should you have questions or opportunities for the whl.travel CASA team, please feel free to contact them at +55 (31) 3889-8596.