Spotlight interview
Interview with Alejandro Palop, CEO, Viajes Globus
1. Tell us about your company: what sets you apart from other buyers and how have you adapted to changing demand and circumstances during the pandemic?
Viajes Globus is an independent travel agency; we have two main lines of business: Corporate, specialised in small and medium companies and Leisure, specialised in Tailormade Luxury Travel. 90% of what we do is tailormade.
After the initial focus on assisting clients during the pandemic, taking care of repatriation, replanning and refunding activities, we understood that the pandemic would last longer than what it initially looked like. We then decided to focus on domestic travel and started promoting and designing tours around Spain. We mapped out a long term strategy to survive the upcoming crisis and also became a more productive and efficient company also due to the investment in technology, training and talent.
2. Why did you decide to join ETOA?
We are an independent travel agency and we wanted to be part of a community representative of the tourism industry. ETOA is an excellent organisation for networking and learning more about the world of tourism.
3. What particular initiatives are you focusing on that you would like to present to ETOA’s existing members?
We believe that sustainable tourism and NET Zero Emissions are one of the most interesting challenges of our industry, and they are also becoming increasingly important to our clients. From the beginning of 2021, we started calculating the CO2 emissions created by our tailor-made programmes in order to reduce them as much as possible. Once this is done, we inform our clients of the results of these calculations and give them the possibility to compensate for those emissions (which otherwise could not be reduced) by participating in one of the United Nations recognised programmes.
