Travel to Brazil: From Recipes to Your Next Reservation Through Viare Travel
By: Jaime Getto
Tags: Travel Writing, Brazil, Visitbrazil, Cookbooks, Travel Technology

Travel to Brazil: From Recipes to Your Next Reservation Through Viare Travel Jaime Getto Follow Jan 27 · 5 min read

Viare Travel is the leading resource for bespoke travel services in Brazil. We spoke with Viare Travel’s Founder, Polyana de Oliveira, to learn more about her business and recently launched cookbook.

Tell us a bit more about Viare Travel. What does your team specialize in?

Viare Travel is based in São Paulo, Brazil. We mostly work with foreigners who are visiting Brazil for holidays and vacations. Our biggest focus is on providing truly Brazilian vacations — we work very locally in our operations.

“Viare” is a combination of the Portuguese words, Viagem and Responsável, meaning Responsible Vacation. A big part of our ethos is to provide a responsible experience — from working locally to being totally transparent, to trying to work as sustainably as possible. We provide an experience where travelers can have a bit of what it truly means to be visiting that destination: we embrace some stereotypes and dispel others. We show you that there’s more to Brazil than samba, soccer and carnaval.

Has the pandemic shifted any of your team’s operations?

We’ve structured our cancellation policies and deposits to be more attractive for travelers. We’ll also be updating our website with travel tips and sample itineraries. As far as internal operations, we’ve been working on quite a few 2021 itineraries and are excited to be tracking our pipeline through Reposite. With Reposite, we have all of our NET rates in a central location — which eases planning with suppliers. Having our supplier information, contact details, and proposals all in one place is going to help maximize our efficiency this year.

As a travel expert, what’s your outlook on the industry’s recovery?

Post-vaccine, people are going to start making their bucket list plans. We’ll see a rise in the type of traveler that has always wanted to visit Brazil, or go to carnaval, or visit the Amazon, but before-COVID perhaps never made the time. These new travelers will also be looking for expert advice and comfort around their trips — they want to feel safe traveling, and interacting with their accommodations and activities. They won’t want to be dealing with everything on their own, especially in a country where they do not speak the language. That’s where Viare comes in.

What inspired you to create a cookbook?

It was a shell shock for the entire world in March 2020 — for us, we were coming off our best month of business in February. Most travel businesses immediately began restructuring their businesses to cater to a domestic audience — an audience that would be active during restrictions on international travel. For us, we wanted to stay true to our roots, and it ended up being a combination of my love for cooking, and some inspiration while walking my dog that led to the creation of our cookbook: Travel to Brazil. Plus, food is such a big part of travel — I’m one of those people who travel to eat.

When traveling, other than seeing the sights, you sit around the table with people from that destination, and you learn about that food and where it comes from, and what the tradition around that food is. So, this idea came to me where I’d put together a book by curating these food experiences that we had sold as an agency, and how to link those experiences to recipes, and to the supplier partners who we work with on the ground. We raised money through a crowdfunding campaign for the book, and I began reaching out to some of our closest local supplier partners — explaining that this was a way to promote their work and our culture, while people can’t travel, and a way to encourage readers to visit in the future.

Photo by Nathalia Segato

What can readers of the book look forward to indulging in?

The book starts off with my story, Viare’s story, and how it came to be through my experience building the travel agency. It’s broken up into regions — as if it were a full itinerary built by Viare. We start in São Paulo, then move around the country. Each region has a story about the supplier, accompanied by a recipe or two. The supplier can be a restaurant, accommodation, an activity provider, or a local guide. We also have a couple of recipes that were given to us by community organizations that welcome tourists into their community. It’s a mix of obvious destinations and others that foreigners don’t necessarily know about.

We feature classic Brazilian recipes — coxinha (chicken fritters), and feijoada (bean stew), as well as creations that were put together by some of our suppliers. For example, a little candy dessert that’s an adaptation of a more classic candy. The creator of the dish is Lene Carvalho, a restaurant owner based on the Cotijuba Island, in the Amazonian state of Pará — and she uses a root that’s only found in the Amazon. So, we adapted it using lemongrass for the cookbook, but it’s interesting to tell the story of why she uses this root. Her community provides this root for a cosmetics company. One day, executives of the cosmetic company were planning to visit the destination, so Lene decided to create this dessert out of the root to highlight it to the visitors — now, it’s something she has on the menu of her restaurant.

These recipes give you something to have a connection with, something to already look forward to before you come and visit Brazil, and excitement to come and taste the original.

Photo by Nathalia Segato

Where can readers learn more about Viare and buy your cookbook?

Learn more about Viare travel at https://www.viaretravel.com/ and buy Travel to Brazil at https://travel-to-brazil.com/the-cookbook/