Maik Schaefer · Regional General Manager, Latin America

Thinking out loud, early.

Two topics I'd want to dig into with the regional team — early hypotheses to pressure-test, not verdicts. A complement to my CV, not a repeat of it.

1 A scorecard I imagine for the role
2 What “impact” means here — questions before answers
1

A scorecard I imagine for this role

To pressure-test with the GMs and the MD — not a finished answer. LatAm is an owned, operations-led region, so the scorecard runs wider than sales.

Commercial & margin

  • Revenue and contribution margin
  • Margin and yield per traveler — not volume
  • Optional-activity attach and in-destination revenue per traveler
  • White-label / B2B operated revenue and pipeline
  • Cost-to-operate per trip; forecast accuracy

Growth & new demand

  • Emerging local demand — LatAm's urban upper-middle and upper class travelling long-haul (Japan a bellwether), leaning into sustainability and impact. Upside I'd watch, and have built before — not a call to pivot.
  • New-market and new-product pipeline

Customer & product

  • NPS / trip-quality; complaints and refunds; repeat and referral

Operations & safety

  • Incident rate and response time; safety-audit compliance
  • On-time, on-quality delivery; supplier performance

People & culture

  • Employee engagement; GM and leader retention
  • Local-leadership pipeline; share of local leaders

Impact — the real kind (topic 2)

  • Share of spend retained locally; local employment
  • Carbon per trip; Foundation and community outcomes

Impact only counts if it earns a line here — which leads to the second topic.

2

What “impact” means here — questions before answers

I don't arrive with the definition of impact for these regions — the people who live and work in them hold it. So, questions rather than answers, to sit with as a team and with local partners. The framing is the point.

Whose definition?

  • Whose definition of “impact” are we using — ours, our travelers', or the community's? Who's in the room when we decide?
  • Ask a Maya family in a “tour region,” a hotel's lowest-paid worker, and a family-run food stall what a good year looks like — where do their answers pull apart?

Who benefits, who bears the cost?

  • Of every dollar spent here, how much stays, and with whom? Who's left out of that flow?
  • Where does our presence make daily life better — and where does it quietly make it harder (prices, housing, water, access)?
  • When community wellbeing and commercial logic disagree, who wins today — and who should?

Culture, consent, carrying capacity

  • Which encounters happen with real consent and benefit — and which risk turning a living culture into a photo stop?
  • What's the honest carrying capacity of the places we love most — and what do we do when growth meets their limits?

Accountability

  • What would local partners change about working with us if it weren't awkward to say?
  • How would a community know we listened — and what would we let them hold us to?

Not to answer these on day one — but to make sure we never stop asking them.