Brazzil

 The problem with Americans regarding Brazil is that for the most part, they are totally ignorant of her in all ways possible. They fall into three main groups: the largest one doesn’t know Brazil exists, a second group believes most people in the country live in jungle huts, and a third one at least knows where's Brazil, but they think Brazilians speak Spanish. Americans who fully comprehend Brazil wouldn’t fill a soccer stadium.
By  Norman Morrison

We are OceanView Tours and Travel of Fortaleza, Ceará. We have been an incoming tour operator to Brazil for the past three years. We think there is an urgent need for the government to step up and participate in bringing U.S. tourists to Brazil, and we will present some statistics to go with our theory.

Brazil is a tourist friendly country. Many areas have good infrastructure that can support much larger numbers of tourists than they usually accommodate. Particularly during the low seasons, the United States is a great place to look for incoming tourists.

It would be a marvelous thing if Brazilian cities would form tourist promotion organizations and independently pursue their opportunities, but it doesn’t seem to work this way. Money flows from the federal to the state to the local government in ways that work as a disincentive for the local governments to form cooperatives to promote tourism. The mechanism by which this happens is not obvious, but the result is very plain to see. Instead of independent promotion or partnerships, the local government relies almost entirely on higher authority to do the broad work of tourism promotion. This can be extremely inefficient and cumbersome, but it is the system we have to work with.

I am most familiar with our situation in Fortaleza, so I will use our beautiful town as an example of unfulfilled tourism promise. Fortaleza is a wonderful tourist destination, with enough reasons to keep her hotels full year round, yet, she suffers the same malaise as her sister cities much of the year during her low seasons. It is a fact that the low season in Fortaleza matches exactly the high travel season of the United States.

The number one reason that has been cited for her lack of visitors is the high cost of travel from the United States to Brazil. She is not, for example, on a major route. I say that this should not even be considered in implementing a tourism strategy for Fortaleza, Natal, Recife, or elsewhere. If enough tourists travel to her shores, the flights will increase and the prices will inevitably come down. Also, even if air fare from the U.S. to Fortaleza were cut in half, Fortaleza would not spend one centavo more on her tourism promotion than she does now, or gain new visitors. Air costs are not the primary issue, at least in the beginning, of creating a strategy to draw the Americans to Brazil.

There is a common and understandable misperception in Brazil, from those who are tasked to think of such things, that Americans know Brazil. This could not be further from the real truth. Americans fall into three main groups. The largest, by far, is the group who doesn’t know Brazil exists. The second group knows of Brazil, but believes that most people live in jungle huts. I know this is laughed about in Brazil, but unfortunately, it is truer than most Brazilians would admit, or even know. The third, and smallest of the three groups of potential travelers do at least know where Brazil is. However, they think Brazilians speak Spanish. Americans who fully comprehend Brazil wouldn’t fill a soccer stadium.

You have to understand a problem before you attempt to fix it, and the problem with Americans regarding Brazil is that for the most part, they are totally ignorant of her in all ways possible. At the same time, we know from our own experience that two things are true. First, Americans do not dislike Brazil. If offered a trip, most Americans would like to come. Americans have no built-in animosity toward Brazil. More Americans probably dislike England, (Because she once owned America) than dislike Brazil. Brazil, in American minds, is simply a non-entity. Brazilian pride alone, should dictate that something should be done about this.

Practically speaking, there is but one remedy. It is a thing we face daily in our pursuit of the Yankee dollar. It is education. Americans must be educated that Brazil not only exists, but also is a great place to go spend their money. We spend over half of our time educating our clients before we ever make the sale. Brazilians should not think they can educate Americans by offering free schoolbooks. The children don’t read the ones they already have, and besides, we don’t need to wait that long.

Before I explain what must be done, I would like to tell you a little more about our company. We began the company three years ago. When we started, we had a great many ideas of the way things operate in the travel world. We were correct with some of our ideas and dead wrong with others. We are offering to share what we have learned about the U.S. market with Embratur, even at the risk of helping the competition, for what is good for OceanView is good for the whole market.

Here is a short list of interesting items we have learned.

Ø       There are less than five major Internet sellers of travel packages to Brazil catering to the average American client. OceanView is in the top 3.

Ø       U.S. travel agents know very little, if anything, about Brazil.

Ø       Airfare is not a major concern of our typical client.

Ø       The American travel class knows very little about Brazil.

Ø       Larger U.S. travel agencies rely on multi agenda USTOA tour operators, who in turn rely on larger incoming tour operators, mostly in southern Brazil to supply travel for their clients. Cities like Fortaleza are often left out of the loop entirely in favor of the better-known southern destinations, and the tourist is often left at a disadvantage because of the long supply line. The result is that you often have companies with very little Brazil experience making the sale.

Ø       U.S. travel agents rely on supply and demand. They supply what is in demand. They do not create the demand. That is the job of the destination.

Here is a chart of our 2000 Internet progress. It shows the frequency of hits to our index, or first page. We did not do any specials or other things that would skew the results. Comments to follow…

We started keeping this record system in March of 2000, so that month can be discounted. Overall, it shows that we had about the same level of “hits” per month year round, except in April and May. This year was about the same. What it shows is that that vacation interest peaks in the U.S. from about March through May as people are thinking about vacations. This is a significant fact to remember.

Below is a list of statistics of page hits on a popular Internet search engine. A great many facts can be learned and inferred from a thoughtful analysis…

Internet citizens conducted all searches in March 2001… Comments to follow.

For comparison purposes:

Popular Travel Search Terms:

 Interpretation of the data…

 The first thing that we must do to understand the numbers is to toss out the obviously Brazilian search terms and the silly searches. Also, it is important to not be too quick to compare this data with overall travel from the U.S. A great portion of overall Brazil travel figures is from Brazilians living in the United States that travel to Brazil anyway. Travel agents in the U.S. can go for years without having an American ask about Brazil travel, even in areas such as Miami, where you might expect more curiosity. The Brazilians operating travel agencies in those areas depend on Brazilians to keep their doors open…not Native Americans.

The search engine data presented is a great source of information on interest of Americans in Brazil. For many Americans, the Internet is the primary means for Brazil travel information.

A travel agent who knows absolutely nothing about Brazil, and this is the rule, and not the exception, can usually prepare a trip to Brazil for a customer. Usually, though, it’s to the town that is served by the Brazilian agency that serves the very large USTOA agency, which serves the U.S. travel agency. In all likelihood, the customer will never hear about the travel opportunities to the rest of the country. (Exceptions include the Amazon, and Iguaçu Falls.) Fortaleza, for example, is typically not on the tour list.

So, the Internet is very important for a large number of American travelers.

 Interesting facts from the data…

 Ø       Argentina is not far behind Brazil in web searches. The reason for the similarity will be explained later.

Ø       The search term travel is the most popular on the net. Travel gets 2137373 hits. Brazil gets 91,258 searches. That is 91,000 out of 2.14 million. This is actually a pretty respectable showing…until you compare against Jamaica with 118,000. Not shown, Puerto Rico with 96,269…Bahamas 61,693…Mexico 172,277…

Ø       The search term cruise gets 215,000 hits. That is more than double the hits for the whole country of Brazil. Cruises are the number one sales item of U.S. travel agents. Everybody has heard of cruise. Doesn’t matter where, as long as it is a cruise. It is also helpful that the agents know cruise packages.

Ø       The name of a country is not a good word to rely on when considering travel data. Brazil could be searched for many reasons other than purely travel. The number one search phrase to watch is Brazil travel. It collects 1826 hits in a month. This is a very bad score.

Ø       If we add the word travel to Jamaica (not shown), the number of hits goes down to 1716. Keep in mind that Jamaica is a very tiny place compared to Brazil, so this is a very important statistic.

Ø       Rio gets nearly 4 times the hits as Fortaleza, but the hits are single minded. Most people want to know about Carnaval. Fortaleza scores above most of the other towns in her category, but not by much.

Ø       The Amazon probably didn’t do quite as well as it would appear due to the American online bookstore, Amazon.com. In practice, using our personal measuring tools on our websites, we have never gotten as much traffic from the keyword Amazon as we would have once expected.

Ø       Overall, for net searches performed, Brazil does not do well for serious English language search terms.

 Some years ago, Brazil decided to turn inward for tourism, which evidently worked. Brazilians make great Brazil tourists, swapping money from their home region to their destination. Residents of Rio deposit tourist money in Manaus. Manausians enrich Rio. It looks great on paper but provides a false tourism economy. Overall Brazilian prosperity occurs only when outside money is put into the system.

Brazilians realize that tourism is an excellent means of wealth production. It is, therefore, a huge mystery that they haven’t gone global in pursuit of that wealth. Brazil does very little advertising outside of Brazil, and advertising is the key to bringing in foreign tourists, especially from the United States. In other words, thousands for advertising wisely spent brings in millions in fresh revenue.

 Travel Census Figures for EUA 1997

 The United States is the primary exporter of travel to the world.

 Recapping the facts:

Ø       The United States is the largest exporter of travel to the world.

Ø       Brazil has abundant and underused travel infrastructure.

Ø       Brazil tourism strategy has concentrated inward instead of outward.

Ø       Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, and Cancun are nearly as popular, or more popular for world travel than the vast country of Brazil.

 As shown earlier, Argentina is nearly as popular for Internet searches as Brazil. The reason is simple. Americans know even less about Argentina than they do about Brazil. The reason they know nothing of Argentina is that Argentina does not advertise itself. In this respect, Argentina and Brazil are equals in the eyes of Yankee travelers.

The travel market in the U.S. is ever expanding. The recent monetary fluctuations have barely affected travel. Americans love to travel and more and more they look south. The top U.S. destinations like Hawaii and Alaska do very little advertising. Southern destinations like Cancun and the Bahamas do relatively very little advertising. Why? They are established now, because of earlier advertising campaigns. They have all the business they can handle. They feel no need to expend ad revenue to increase business. They don’t need to. What does this mean for future advertisers? It means that the door is wide open for unchallenged advertising. The competition is so bloated with business that they feel no need to do much more than simply maintain their market. It’s a grand time to enter the U.S. advertising market now.

Jamaica is a prime example. The reason they enjoy dominance over Brazil in Internet searches is because they had a great advertising campaign in the U.S. a couple of years ago. They opened the floodgates of American tourism to their country and are still reaping the rewards even though they are advertising far less now. A good, well-planned advertising campaign has a tremendous amount of staying power. Everyone in the United States, of a certain age, for example, knows the koala bear is the symbol for Australia and Qantas Airlines and their advertising days are long gone.

In the U.S. we have an old saying. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? For travel, we know which came first. The advertising. Advertising creates interest, which creates tourists, which eventually lowers the air prices, which creates even more demand. The best example of this is Cancun. Whoever heard of Cancun?

From the Encyclopedia Britannica…

Originally settled by Maya Indians, the area was first described and named Cancúne (Mayan: “Vessel at the End of the Rainbow”) in 1843 by the American explorer John Lloyd Stephens and the British explorer Frederick Catherwood in their classic work Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (1843). Cancún remained a small fishing-and-gathering settlement of about 100 Maya until 1970, when, after a three-year study of conditions by the Mexican government in association with private interests, the area was selected as a suitable site for an international holiday center. Within a decade a steady flow of tourists from all parts of the world had established Cancún as a successful experiment in planning an entirely new city and resort area.

In 1970 the government of Mexico and private interests decided Cancun would be a resort area and took the steps to make it happen. The airlines didn’t do it. Fate didn’t do it. Men of good will and vision did it. The road was a long and winding one, with much uncertainty along the way, but in the end, vision conquered all doubts and this little flyspeck of a town now hosts vastly more U.S. tourists than Brazil each year.

 The nay Sayers, (people who love to say no) will counter that the circumstances are different in Brazil. I could not agree more! The state of Ceará alone is worth 30 Cancuns.

Advertising in the United States is the key to success…

 Things that haven’t worked:

Ø       Direct mail to travel agents, including beautiful full color 24 page books on Brazil. They get bombarded with junk mail. Unasked for, they go promptly into the trash can.

Ø       Travel and trade shows. A complete and utter waste of time and resources, often handled incorrectly in Brazil, and not taken seriously by the Very Large operators in the United States, unless they were thinking about doing business anyway.

Ø       Magazine ads. Full-page ads awash in a sea of other full-page ads in industry magazines the public doesn’t usually see anyway.

Ø       Web advertising. Useful only in conjunction with other advertising. Web sites work best when they are part of an overall promotional campaign.

Things that do work:

Ø       Television and radio advertising.

Ø       Beautiful full color 24 page books on Brazil that are asked for by travel agents who are interested in Brazil.

Ø       Travel and trade shows after a successful advertising campaign.

Ø       Web sites after an advertising campaign.

The bottom line…

The typical U.S. travel agent will never suggest a new travel product to a client without being directly asked by the client. They will stick with what they know. In our case, Cancun, and the Bahamas. If, on the other hand, the client requests information on Brazil, the travel agent will do everything possible to service their client, leaving no stone unturned, and no door unopened.

The bottom line is that the request for Brazil information must come from the client. The travel agent will never offer it. It is hopeless to try to sell the travel agent on Brazil. The client asking for information sells the agent on Brazil. The client is made aware of Brazil vacation opportunities through advertising.

Have you noticed that many travel brochures produced in Brazil are either bilingual, or totally in English? Why is this…to attract English-speaking clients? Some companies have recognized for years that the U.S. is a great source of revenue. The problem is getting their information into the hands of U.S. citizens.

Most often their beautiful and expensive brochures remain boxed up or given to Brazilians who don’t understand English. Sometimes they are given away at travel shows only to be tossed into the nearest wastebasket. The company who makes the investment in English text brochures has part of the solution, but they are handicapped to the point of being unable to get their literature to the intended target. This is where a unified approach by government and the travel industry in Brazil can make a huge difference. Advertising properly in the U.S. will open paths for those brochures to reach the intended audience.

Advertising in the United States brings tourist business to Brazil…

 The way to travel prosperity for Brazil is through advertising in the United States. The results are that the client approaches the travel agent about coming to Brazil. The travel agent, who will not offer Brazil without being asked becomes aware that Brazil actually exists. If the travel agents perceive a trend in Brazil travel, a cascade effect occurs, and before long, the agent begins to volunteer Brazil travel. When this happens, Brazil can modify or even suspend advertising, because once the travel doors are open, they are slow to close.

The goal is to convince travel agents to offer Brazil travel, and the only thing that can accomplish this mission is the walk in client. The only way to convince the average U.S. traveler to inquire about Brazil is through advertising. An inquisitive client can do far more good in convincing travel agents to jump on the Brazil train than $1000 in direct advertising to that agent. The back door approach of a company or a country trying to impress U.S. agencies has failed each time it has been tried. The front door approach of using tourist clients to impress travel agents has worked every time it is tried.

Ø       Television® Cable channels®Weather Channel, A&E, History Channel, CNN.

Ø       Radio®Popular radio talk shows with an upscale audience.

Ø       Booklets, brochures and pamphlets. Be ready to send this material to travel agents as soon as demand for Brazil information increases.

Advertising in the U.S.

The typical way advertising works in the U.S. is to employ an advertising agency. Keeping in mind that an ad agency’s main goal is to place advertising, which is not necessarily a good thing, particularly if they don’t understand Brazil. The best way to handle this is to have a well-defined set of goals and plans before acquiring an agency, and to closely monitor their progress.

U.S. advertising agencies…

Ø       Do not charge the advertiser. The company they place the ad with pays them.

Ø       Do market research.

Ø       Place your advertisements with the best television or radio program.

Ø       Directly make commercials or sub contract out to other companies.

The goal for beginning the Brazil adverting campaign should be March 2002…

 The best advertising is with solidly performing cable channels and radio shows. The Weather Channel is a top favorite and can work out a variety of packages. A&E and the History Channel cater to older and more sophisticated audiences…with money. For radio, talk shows are very popular, and certain shows pull the types of audiences that are desirable. In advertising here as well as Brazil, there is smart advertising and there is dumb advertising. You can make a fortune or lose a fortune with advertising. A good ad agency will provide good documentation for their choices, and won’t place your ads in bad locations.

Brazil advertising, to be effective needs to be as targeted as possible. Good audiences for Brazil ads are upper and upper middle-income people, including the more highly educated. The shows mentioned, and ones like them stand a better chance of pulling the type of audience required…those with money and open minds. It is imperative that the ad agency understands as much as possible about the challenges of Brazil advertising.

It is not my goal, nor is it possible to go into all the details and ramifications of advertising strategy in the U.S. Rather; it is my hope to make you more aware of the possibilities.

In summation, in order for Brazil to be successful in bringing American citizens to her shores, she must decide that she wants them. Then, she must throw off the old ideas and notions of the past that have pointedly not worked. She must go directly to the American traveler with advertising, who in turn will go to the travel agent, who in turn will begin to offer Brazil travel without being asked.

The tourist infrastructure of Brazil is in fantastic shape to work with increased business. New Brazil oriented tour companies are coming online every month and are vastly under worked, working with a marginal base of clients. Everyone is in a holding pattern awaiting Brazil to come out from under its shell. The process of opening the floodgates to American tourism to Brazil begins with one man of courage and motivation.

OceanView Tours and Travel offers our every assistance and help in this effort.

Sincerely,

Norman Morrison

Norman Morrison is the owner of the U.S. portion of OceanView Tours and Travel of Fortaleza, Ceará, a tour operator to Brazil. He fell in love with Brazil a few years ago and is very passionate about seeing it take its rightful place as the number one holiday capital of the world. You can read their monthly Brazil travel newsletter by sending a note to
SendMeTheNewsletter@BrazilAmerica.com Their websites have over 1000 pictures, audio, and video dedicated to Brazil travel. http://www.brazilamerica.com

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