Brazil’s biggest corporate travel firm Copastur has entered the education counselling business, establishing an organisation within called Change Programs.
In an interview with The PIE, the product development specialist for Change Programs and its chief executive said the move was a natural venture for Copastur – and said its existing business would supercharge the first-year success.
“We are going to prospective clients with the Change Programs brand, but of course, we are going to prospective corporate clients as well because it’s the main business of Copastur,” said Diogo Jansen.
“So it’s a little bit different from the rest of the market,” he added, trusting the niche of being able to go to existing corporate clients from Copastur.
Working with those corporate clients would involve going into companies and setting up educational programs in English and other languages, as well as professional development courses.
“These companies have a budget for training, and for training managers and directors and such,” Ligia Maas, head of Change Programs posited.
“We think we can create programs that match with the business of our clients – and in doing so, doing something nobody does in the market.”
The idea began in 2019, but when “everything stopped” in the pandemic, the company decided to regroup and focus more time to build the Change Programs organisation.
Maas said the idea was, as is with each part of Copastur’s overall business model, to create a 360 experience where the client can get “everything they need inside” of the business. The same goes, she said, with Change Programs.
The Change Programs organisation has already achieved both ICEF and English UK Agency status.
Copastur’s venture into education counselling has taken them to multiple conferences for the first time, including English UK’s Studyworld, with more appointments and conference attendances set up throughout 2024.
“We’re doing something nobody does in the market”
“As of now, we have around 35 agreements with different schools, both chain and non-chain schools,” Jansen noted. The plan is to be able to send students to schools globally as well – Jansen said it wants to involve multiple schools teaching various languages.
Maas said the focus on corporate students will come first to start with, and a number of private students will also be targeted as well before further expansion with individuals.
“We don’t want to offer just a good price, we want to offer quality because this is what caused [us to enter the business]. We are very conscious about the quality of the services we offer,” Maas added.
