A travel business is easy to admire at the moment of purchase. The screen offers a destination, the price looks agreeable, and an email arrives with the comforting suggestion that the future has been arranged. The harder test comes later. A departure changes. A connection disappears. Someone has to work out what to do with the booking, the documents and the person holding them.
Luciano Barreto’s career has brought him to both ends of that transaction. He helped build Submarino Viagens, led Almundo’s entry into Brazil and took responsibility for its international operations. Since August 2021, he has led AirHelp’s Brazilian business, working in the part of travel where the original promise needs repair. The same passenger who once needed a ticket may now need an answer.
His route between those jobs contains a corporate reunion, an entrepreneurial restart and a sabbatical that became rather crowded. It also offers a useful way to look at a travel executive: follow the work after the customer clicks.
The old company comes round again
In 2019, Barreto’s professional past caught up with his present. Submarino Viagens, by then controlled by CVC Corp, announced an agreement to buy Almundo. Barreto was directing Almundo’s international operations. Earlier, he had helped establish and lead Submarino Viagens. Business occasionally provides a reunion with a purchase price attached.
His responsibilities at Almundo covered Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. He had led the Brazilian launch, taking an established Argentine travel company into a market where he already knew the machinery of online bookings. By the time of the acquisition announcement, the job involved several countries and the question of how their operations would fit into a larger group.
He approached the transaction through possible synergies and a broader international presence. In the same period, his view of distribution was less doctrinaire than a career in internet businesses might suggest. He defended online sales while acknowledging the value of physical shops. Customers, he argued, should have the freedom to choose the channel they preferred. The channel was a means of serving the traveller.
A new market, with people who knew it
The work behind Almundo’s Brazilian arrival had started earlier. In 2017, Barreto described joining its management in August 2016 and assembling the local team. Many of its roughly 35 members had worked with him before. The management group included André Ormonde in products and business intelligence, Eduardo Pocai in marketing, Fernanda Ferreira in new business and Leonardo Gomes in technology.
That detail says something about how the launch was organised. The company was entering a new country with people who had already worked inside its travel market. Suppliers, product selection and customer habits would have familiar features, even under a new brand. Barreto’s stated advantage was avoiding some of the learning required of an entirely unfamiliar entrant.
Almundo CEO Juan Pablo Lafosse made a related point in 2018: Brazil required an experienced local team and a close understanding of its particularities. Several members had come from Submarino Viagens. The photograph of Lafosse and Barreto belongs to that moment, when the Brazilian operation was finding its place within the regional company.
Read together, their accounts suggest that market entry depended partly on people carrying knowledge from one business into another. A website can cross a border more easily than an operation can. The operation needs people who know which questions to ask.
- 2006Submarino Viagens
- 2018Almundo’s Brazil launch
- 2020Entrepreneurial restart
- 2021AirHelp Brazil
A break with a business attached
After leaving Almundo, Barreto took time to consider his next professional steps. In an announcement in early 2021, he explained that he wanted to resume his entrepreneurial path. He was becoming a partner at Performa Web, the digital marketing agency, and said he had invested in two other businesses whose details would follow.
He thanked Denis Casita for the invitation and trust. Performa Web’s own announcement described responsibilities spanning strategic planning, marketing and sales, finance and human resources. It was a broad operating brief, extending well beyond choosing advertisements. The agency also pointed to his experience at Rumbo, TravelWeb, Submarino Viagens, B2W and Almundo.
AirHelp’s official biography gives the break an entertaining footnote: it says Barreto created Anfitrião Prime during a three-month sabbatical in 2020. A sabbatical is usually advertised as a pause. Starting a hospitality company is an energetic interpretation of the word.
The business managed properties for short and medium stays. By May 2021, it was reported to manage more than 200 properties and distribute listings across more than 30 booking sites. Its services included photographs, guest communication, cleaning and maintenance. That combination put Barreto close to another set of travel problems: the work required to make a place ready for the person who booked it.
An affiliate programme added a familiar distribution idea. Travel influencers could promote the properties and earn a commission from resulting bookings. The offer joined an audience to an inventory of places to stay. The operational promise still had to be delivered at the door.
When the itinerary comes apart
Barreto joined AirHelp in August 2021 with a remit to develop the Brazilian business model and new products. He stepped away from executive duties at Anfitrião Prime while retaining roles as partner, adviser and investor. The appointment moved his main operating attention to passengers dealing with disrupted flights.
His work there has included public advocacy for changes to passenger-rights rules. In October 2022, he argued for clearer compensation guidelines in Brazil and pointed to the European model. His concern was predictability: if the parties understood the consequences of a disruption, fewer disagreements might have to be resolved through litigation.
“Improving air passenger rights is in everyone’s interest.”
Luciano Barreto, October 2022
The proposal fits the commercial problems he had spent years handling, though it approaches them from a different position. A travel business asks people to trust arrangements they cannot fully inspect before buying. Barreto’s argument was that clearer rules could improve the experience when those arrangements failed. He connected passenger protection with legal certainty and service quality.
That is an argument about how a market should work. It requires airlines, passengers and the people handling claims to understand one another’s obligations. For an executive whose earlier jobs centred on making travel available to buy, it represents attention to the promise that remains after payment.
Some colleagues are called Lara and Herman
In November 2022, Barreto also explained AirHelp’s use of automation and machine learning. His emphasis was on removing bottlenecks and repetitive tasks, improving the quality of claims and making the daily work easier for employees. The promised benefit lay in the process passengers experienced.
The company’s account gave its automated tools names: AGA, LARA and HERMAN. Their work included checking documents, supporting legal paperwork and assessing possible jurisdictions. Flight information and past cases helped inform the process. Employees handled more complicated cases and supervised the work.
A simplified view of the tools described in AirHelp’s November 2022 account.
It is a quietly revealing set of priorities. A passenger is unlikely to care whether a tool has a charming name. Missing paperwork, however, can consume time. An incomplete claim can add another task to a trip that has already supplied enough of them. Barreto’s account concentrated on improving that ordinary work. Precision has a customer-facing consequence, even when it happens behind the screen.
From Gdańsk to the restaurant table
In January 2024, Barreto travelled to Gdańsk for an AirHelp summit. He described 13 presentations from company leaders and his own contribution on Latin American travel and the Brazilian business plan. He reported that the local operation was exceeding its expected results, without publishing figures in that account.
Later that year, he hosted a Brazilian summit in São Paulo. Agents supporting customers and working with the lawyer network attended a presentation covering fourth-quarter results, challenges and projects planned for 2025. His thanks named André Fuzer, Susana Mieko Thoma, Lyz Busi, Patricia Sanchez and César Belusso.
The account finished somewhere more convivial than a presentation slide: the team went to a restaurant to celebrate. “It was tons of fun!” he wrote. The exclamation is a small human detail in a career otherwise recorded through appointments, launches and acquisitions. It also makes the supporting cast visible. The business plan had people attached.
His involvement in hospitality continued. In a company video published in April 2026, Anfitrião Prime identified him as its president, speaking on a property-management panel in São Paulo. He discussed revenue management, distribution, regulation and technology. His advice cautioned against accelerating growth without the operational efficiency needed to deliver results.
That concern brings the career back to the customer. A new market, another property, another booking: each creates work someone has to carry out. Barreto’s public record suggests a sustained interest in organising that work, whether the traveller is choosing a destination or trying to recover from a cancelled plan. The purchase may be quick. Keeping the promise takes longer.