In this context, Travel2latam spoke with Carlos Stefani, CEO of Assist Card.
What is the expectation of your participation in this event?
For us, Anato and any fair or showcase that allows us to give visibility to what we do at the end of the day is very important. We are obsessed with more and more people traveling protected. We see the bad part of the trip all the time, people who get sick, get into accidents, lose suitcases, and our mission is that everyone has to travel protected.
Since last year we have worked hard with our advertising and marketing campaigns to get to the heart of the issue of attendance costs. When you are traveling you imagine everything positive, but we remember that, unfortunately, things can go wrong and it is a statistical matter. There is a small percentage of people to whom something bad happens during the trip and that is what we are here for. Our challenge is to ensure that more and more people travel protected and that finally protection, assistance, insurance become something completely fundamental and are no longer optional.
What forecast do you have at a general level for the entire operation of the company?
At a general level, we have a growth budget of 25% and in Colombia we are a little above that. The operation is going well. After the pandemic, a higher level of awareness was generated about how essential it is to travel protected and, in turn, we leverage that into product improvement.
We changed our product offering a lot due to the pandemic. Many years ago it happened that there were people who had been responsible for purchasing travel assistance, went on a trip, had assistance and then saw that the amount of coverage was not enough, that was a terrible scenario. So we as a company have the responsibility to tell people what they have to travel with, what they need, and how the cost of health has skyrocketed in the world. In the United States, a day of hospitalization does not go below 20 thousand dollars, so perhaps some competitors sell products with limitations of 15 thousand dollars, and they are deceptive.
In recent months there have been news regarding its commitment to the sports market. What's the general idea about that?
We are a global company and we have found a very good opportunity in sports, especially linked to clubs or teams that have the possibility of playing regional tournaments. Sport has another advantage: it is one of the few things left today that can be seen live. And living has a different meaning, and in addition, sport transmits a lot of the values with which we identify, which is a healthy life.
What can you tell us about the evolution of the company?
From a commercial point of view, we closed last year very well and for this year we expect growth of approximately 30%. We are off to a good start in the first two months, because we are above last year's budget. So we continue working so that more and more people travel protected, selling products with coverage up to 3 million dollars, which is something unheard of in the market.
And the company continues to grow, we have had offices in Spain for decades, but they were mainly dedicated to supporting the operation, that is, Europe is one of the main destinations for our travelers. We have put together an entire strategic landing plan to start working now in all channels. The travel agency channel, which is our natural distribution channel, and from a regulatory point of view, we have created our operation. We are going to have a status that allows us to design products more in line with the tastes of European customers. So starting in the second half of this year we will be more firm with the commercial operation in Spain.
What other plans can you share with us regarding behind the scenes of the company's own operation?
We have paid a lot of attention to the issue of improving the experience, our challenge is to make any accident or inconvenience as least bad as possible. We have worked a lot in this line and in terms of automation. Our premise is that the customer has to choose which channel they want to transact through and there are people who, for whatever reason, prefer to continue on the phone. The truth is that especially younger people prefer to use digital media. Today 54% of our assistance is opened through digital means. It is a gigantic number compared to what I could perhaps tell you four or five years ago.