AMERICANS, the joke went, spent millions of dollars to produce a pen astronauts can use in space; the Russians, on the other hand, used pencils.

Baron Travel Corp. chief executive Marilen Sandejas-Yaptangco carries the same sensibility: she believes the best way to connect all 7,100 islands of the Philippines is not to build bridges but ride the water.

“Traveling on a cruise liner remains romantic today as it was when we sort of ‘plunged’ into the business,” Sandejas-Yaptangco said.

The strategy of looking at the glass half-empty than half-filled could be considered simplistic, especially for someone sitting on a P240-billion travel and tourism market, as forecast by the World Travel and Tourism Council.

But Sandejas-Yaptangco, who holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Ateneo de Manila University, has that keen eye on where the waves of the market are lapping.

Her secret is traveling a lot.

“In this business, it’s a mortal sin to have your passport expire,” she says, adding that she travels nearly every month for seven to 10 days. Her managers are also always in and out of the country.

“Aside from being always on our toes, our ears are always on the ground, too,” Sandejas-Yaptangco says, “because right now the market is very, very good: the peso’s strong, making it cheaper to travel.”

Good times could be seen in Baron Travel’s numbers, which it submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission: cash at the end of 2006 was at P11.77 million, just under a million of the P12.7-million cash it began that year. Income from operations grew by a quarter of a million to P2.96 million last year from P2.65 million in 2005.

As chief executive for more than a decade of the 40-year-old travel agency, Sandejas-Yaptangco is tasked “to figure out the best business mix, the best product and the best market.”

“I should know where to take the company’s resources with less risks. I don’t gamble,” she says.  

Cruising

It was while attending the biggest travel and tourism marketplace in the world in 1994 when the 32-year-old travel executive decided to take her first risk, just months after her father gave her the reins.

“I just picked out brochures after brochures but this booth of Royal Caribbean [Cruises Ltd.] really struck me as something really unique. The lady manning the booth performed her spiel and I thought that was that,” recalls the daughter of retired Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban, who opened Baron Travel in 1967 on Padre Faura, Manila.

Panganiban just nodded when her daughter said she wants to offer cruising as an alternative vacation option.

“He didn’t say anything; whether it was a good business decision or not. I still think it was his way of really giving me the full freedom to run the company,” Sandejas-Yaptangco says.

It was a gamble at the time, as nobody was offering international cruising as a travel option and the country’s power crisis was draining companies’ pockets buying diesel-run generators.

Sandejas-Yaptangco believes it was providential: Royal Caribbean, a Norwegian-American cruise-ship company, was at that time also looking at expanding its business, especially in Asia. The Miami, Florida-based cruise-ship business gave exclusive rights, including an annual budget for marketing and operations, for distribution of its product to Baron Travel.

“When we started that year, we were floored with the market response,” Sandejas-Yaptangco said, citing that they were able to sell nearly a hundred tour packages.

Now, she claims, Royal Caribbean maintains a 40-percent share of the market ship-cruise vacations that have now gone to more than 2,000 packages.

Cruises, which cost a minimum of between $80 and $100 a night for every person, allow the traveler to wake up in another city or country after the ship leaves dock in, say, Miami or whatever port of origin for that matter, says Sandejas-Yaptangco.

“You could wake up in a port in France the first day and by midnight or dawn the next day, you’re in another city, another country,” she points out, adding that for 14 days, vacationers would be able to visit five or six countries. 

Troubled waters

LIKE the waters these festive ships sail on, the country’s travel and tourism industry is also uneven.

“Cruising is just one of the many options for vacation we offer, as the market also looks for other travel choices,” Sandejas-Yaptangco says, adding that a tourist can opt for a rail tour this year and go on a cruise the following year.

The main factor influencing these options, of course, is the purchasing power of consumers.

Likewise, with agencies like Baron Travel relying more on inbound than outbound, the image of the Philippines is a prime factor.

“Even a little whisper here, a dollop of rumor there about the Philippines causes a ripple in the industry,” Sandejas-Yaptangco said.

She recalls the 1997 financial crisis that swept Asia, sapping the peso’s strength, as well as the country’s image. Successive natural turbulences or hints of troubles in the government also nearly broke the industry’s back.

“Many don’t know it but political circuses impact a lot on the bottom line of travel agencies,” Sandejas-Yaptangco says.

But like a real captain, she has steered Baron Travel—as well as the industry since she headed the Philippine Travel Association for several years in different capacities—for it not only to survive but also remain sturdy.

The agency was able to maintain its Tokyo and Osaka offices in Japan, as well as a center of operation in Cebu City. It still has branch offices in four five-star hotels in Makati.

Last year the company’s tour income increased by 11 percent to P21.44 million, while travel income shot up nearly 44 percent from P9.8 million in 2005.

“But there’s a price to these,” she says, noting that she also had to resort to job cuts but kept those who were with her father since the start. These, Sandejas-Yaptangco says, were the times most painful to her.

“What kept us going is the goodwill,” she says.

She was also well trained to face such challenges. “There are theories in school, from my MBA education, that equipped me properly but what I learned from my father and from the learning process as CEO were more than valuable,” Sandejas-Yaptangco says.

Passport to success

AMERICANS, the joke went, spent millions of dollars to produce a pen astronauts can use in space; the Russians, on the other hand, used pencils.

Selling beauty

Another cosmetic surgeon battles it out in crowded market

The current rage for beauty and wellness has led to an assortment of clinics offering surgical and nonsurgical procedures to make clients look good and feel good.

Winning: Competence trumps corporate bias

Q: I am seeking a rewarding career, having recently completed my bachelor’s degree in management. What obstacles will I likely need to overcome in the corporate world being an older, five-foot tall, African-American woman? Name Withheld, Houston 

A: When we first received your letter, we put it into a file labeled, “How To Succeed In Business While Looking Different.”

Looking backward

At a union hall in Detroit packed with 800 members of the AFL-CIO and their families, Democratic presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton promises to break the mold on trade.

It’s Greek to me

NO one in the UN picked a quarrel with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo when she told that great assembly that the Philippines is the most democratic nation in Asia. It would have been pointless; the UN is not the forum for a debate on political theory and practice, but over here, there were some voices which greeted the President’s boast with not much enthusiasm.

Best teachers, worst practitioners

EIGHT executive directors of the World Bank were here in the Philippines on the very first day of the Senate hearings into the national broadband network/Zhong Xing Telecommunications Equipment Co. Ltd. (NBN/ZTE) contract. The executive director for the Philippines, a Brazilian national, was part of the team. They were here to learn about World Bank projects in the Philippines.

Are you delegating so it sticks?

You know that a key part of any executive’s or manager’s job is helping subordinates develop professionally—including honing their problem-solving and decision-making powers.

How to teach pride in ‘dirty work’

Managers in occupations that the public considers repellent can use an array of techniques to help their employees cope with and indeed feel proud of their work, according to a study that drew on interviews with 54 managers in 18 stigmatized occupations, including exterminator, “exotic” entertainer and prison guard.

When companies do good

HO CHI MINH CITY—Alongside the march of globalization is the swelling grudge of people who are being affected by this sweeping trend have against private businesses, which they blame for exacerbating their plight.  “First, a company is a predator to be shot.

Future of business

Apollo Enriquez isn’t one to stand in the way of development.

In fact, when a restaurant he partly owns in Cebu had to be torn down to give way to an Ayala Corp. real-estate project, he even led the operation.

SAVE ME

TWO pillars of the country’s financial safety net are rigorously working to increase the amount of savings derived from remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). 

Banking on the poor

It is a concept that invites bemused skepticism from those who regard banking as a profit-making pursuit that leaves no room for the interests and welfare of the poor. A typical comment goes: “Social banking? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?” 

Winning: Generation Why Not

Q: As a baby-boomer executive with 30 years of experience, I encounter many young people entering the business world today pretty sure they know it all. What is your opinion about Gen Y’s sense of entitlement? Chris Perkins, Vandalia, Ohio                 

A: We don’t get it. That is, we don’t get why everyone is so down on Gen Y.

iCLONES

SHANGHAI—At the end of an alley in Taiwan’s most violent city, a black Mercedes-Benz sedan blocks a sliding- glass door that opens only from within. Inside, technophiles can buy iPhone knockoffs for two-thirds the legitimate price.

Fake iPhones reach Filipinos

EVEN before genuine iPhones reach Asian shores in 2008, knockoff units from China are already being sold in online auction and shopping web sites, including the Philippines.

The quotable Marxists

THERE are two quotable Marxes or Marxians, one of whom, Karl,  the prophetic economist and philosopher, would not call himself a Marxist, while the other one, Groucho (of the Marx brothers fame), wouldn’t have minded very much what you call him as long as you pronounced his name right.

The generals who would be kings

To understand the unrest wracking Burma, consider a new town built in the lush hills northeast of Mandalay. It’s near the British-built hill station of Maymyo, where Burma’s old colonial masters went to escape the heat and dust of the plain. Maymyo still boasts red-brick mansions covered in ivy and pleasant gardens with roses, which flourish in the almost alpine climate of the hills.

Leading Change in Latin America

While it may be tempting for companies in developing countries to focus on growth and profits before they even begin to address climate change, our organization is finding that sustainability actually confers competitive advantage. At Masisa, the $886-million forestry and wood manufacturing company in Chile where I oversee social and environmental responsibility, a key part of our strategy is to engage business-to-business customers in our efforts to become greener.

CONVERSATION:  Alyson Slater, Global Reporting Initiative’s director of strategy, on how disclosing emissions benefits companies

Carbon-emissions reporting is a laborious undertaking that publicly exposes potentially serious liabilities and risks facing your business—and it’s voluntary. So why do it? We explored that question with Alyson Slater, the director of strategy at Global Reporting Initiative, an Amsterdam-based organization that has developed the most widely used framework of reporting principles, guidance and standard disclosures on environmental, social and economic performance.

UPS at 1OO

On the occasion of United Parcel Service’s (UPS) 100th birthday, many people have asked me how a company that began as a small US messenger service evolved to become a world leader in transportation and logistics.

Winning: The long road from public sector to private business

Q: I have a master’s degree in Public Administration and have worked in government for 13 years, but I am thinking about making the leap to the private sector. Any advice? Cynthia Whitbred-Spanoulis, Virginia Beach, Virginia                 

A: Forget everything you know.

Crackdown

BANGKOK—Myanmar’s military rulers imposed a nighttime curfew and banned assemblies Tuesday after thousands of Buddhist monks defied their warnings and mounted another day of prodemocracy protests to the cheers of crowds in the streets of Yangon.

Lawfare doctrine

MAJOR General Charles J. Dunlap Jr., the US Air Force’s deputy advocate general, defined lawfare as “the strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective.” 

48 hours in China with Tony Meloto

I am writing this article on a Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight from Beijing to Manila after a two-day whirlwind trip to Shanghai and Beijing with Antonio Meloto, the moving spirit behind the Gawad Kalinga (GK) movement.

Meloto Reflections

Tony Meloto’s moment of truth occurred in 1999, as he was agonizing on whether he had reached a point when he was denying his family precious time as he dedicated increasingly more of his life to Gawad Kalinga (GK).

Innovate faster by melding design and strategy

If they’re to do their job most effectively, designers should be brought into the innovation process at the very earliest stages. Too many companies still make the mistake of keeping business strategy and design activities separate.

CONVERSATION:  Outdoor-apparel start-up Ceo Chris Van Dyke on new ways to feed customers’ passions

Nau, a fledgling US retailer of high-performance outdoor apparel, does everything backward. It designed its web site before building a single store; it encourages customers to buy less; and it markets by not talking about itself.

Best practices Green Bag it

The bayong became relevant once more when SM and Unilever Philippines recently joined hands to introduce to the public a reusable shopping bag as part of their campaign to promote environmentalism in the country.

Winning: Creative employees need creative management

Q: What’s the best approach for leading creative people, and does it really differ from leading everyone else? Joe Burke, Los Angeles                 

A: In a word, yes.

Entrepreneur: The dish on Rai Rai Ken

Rai Rai Ken Ramen House and Sushi Bar has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a small and modest tea house in Makati City. It now boasts of 30 outlets all over the Philippines, and still growing. It takes pride in its tradition of serving authentic Japanese food, especially ramen or Japanese noodles, which is really its specialty.

SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGES PHILIPPINES

Tommy was just a day old when he was found at the entrance of a town church in Batangas, wrapped in newspapers and placed in a box. His finder could tell he was newly born from the fresh umbilical cord dangling from his tiny body.

Confessions of a Sociopath

The author of the above quotation is either a physician who doesn’t want to be suspected of professional jealousy or a cynic who doesn’t want to be taken to a mental institution.

The grace of being Lean Alejandro

How does one write about a man whom one hardly knew beyond the official and professional? How does one tell his story especially to a generation 20 years removed from the time he walked this earth? How does one even venture to share what and how he thought of a world that changes so much and yet remains ever so the same? 

Block that defense: how to make sure your constructive criticism works

Why do top executives have difficulty receiving and responding to constructive criticism? Because so many high-fliers have received little criticism in their careers. As Chris Argyris, director emeritus of the Monitor Group (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and the James Bryant Conant Professor of Education and Organizational Behavior Emeritus at Harvard Business School, writes in “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,” a 1991 Harvard Business Review article, “Because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure.”

How they did it: charge what your products are worth

In a world with too many choices, aligning a product’s price with its perceived benefits is critical—but many companies seem to miss this simple point. A good question for any company to ask itself is “What would Goldilocks think?” Instead of offering too few benefits—or too many—for a stated price, they must perfectly align benefits and price across the product category and the brand portfolio, finding the combination that is “just right.”

Brain gain

(Last of five parts)

It’s easy for Filipinos to decide to leave the country to seek greener pastures. It’s much harder for these Filipinos, used to working abroad and earning sizeable sums, to come back.

Talent Search

(Fourth of five parts) 

Today’s companies face five critical business challenges: globalization, technology, the quest for profitability through growth, intellectual capital constraints and the exigencies of continuous change. Regardless of their industry, size or location, these challenges require these organizations to continuously build new capabilities—a responsibility which, University of Michigan School of Business professor Dave Ulrich writes, human resources (HR) should embrace for these organizations to last.

Civil Servants No More

(Third of five parts)

Jenny Balatbat left for the United States to teach kindergarten pupils, leaving behind her job as a teacher at the San Gabriel Elementary School in Bulacan.

Employee-Retention Strategies

(Second of five parts)

MANAGING talent has become more essential to the private sector than it used to be. Companies are now beginning to dig up insights into managing talent that should allow them to deal with brain drain in a more organized way. What is bold, they say, is to make lemonades when life gives you lemons.

THE WAR FOR TALENT

(First of five parts)

When the management of Fairchild Semiconductors, a global electronics firm, offered industrial engineer Manuel Villa, 32, a management job in Singapore three years ago, he didn’t hesitate to grab the offer.