Passing the torch

Alejandra "Dading" Clemente is finally setting down her luggage.

Thirty years after she started what is now one of the country’s biggest travel agencies, the tough lady at 65 is finally heeding the boarding call for retirement.

"It’s about time," she says. Her four children are all grown up and ready to take over the Rajah Group of Companies. Her husband Jose Clemente Jr., a pillar in the local travel industry, passed away last summer and it "hasn’t been the same without him." She wants to take it easy, never mind that what propelled Rajah was her inherent competitive spirit, or that she got off the adrenaline rush that comes when she bags an account or gets a big foreign group to visit the Philippines. And, of course, there’s the grandmother side to Dading that’s itching to take her grandkids Jennifer and Jose IV to Disneyland, just like she did when her own children – Jose III, Alexander, Mari-len and Aileen – were young.

What is remarkable about this lady is that when she started Rajah, she was having kids "one after the other because we were running out of time." She was 32 when she got married, Joe was 36. And this marriage produced a fifth child: the Rajah Group of Companies.

Rajah has diversified into related services since it was founded in 1972 when it had all but three people (Dading, a secretary and a janitor). Soon came more help: Dading’s husband Joe in 1975, after he resigned his tourism post with the government; niece Mercedes Cruz who provided the financial expertise; and in 1990 came Alice San Juan, executive vice president of Rajah Travel, whose long experience in outbound travel helped this division grow.

Rajah Group of Companies has five separate and independent corporations, namely, Rajah Tours for inbound travel; Rajah Travel Corporation for outbound; Trans-Inter Corporation for transportation services; PCCO or Philippines Congress Organizing Center; and Rajah Tours International with offices in San Francisco and Tokyo.

Her youngest daughter Aileen jokes, "If there is something from her genes directly, it’s Rajah. It’s her baby. She created it from scratch. Yung mga anak, that was naturally done."

So nobody at the table is surprised when Dading lets it out that she’ll still be around to give advice to her children and can subsequently devote more time to industry affairs after her retirement. Eldest son Jojo quips, "Baka mauna pa akong mag-retire sa kanya."

"But really," says Dading, "In two years, I will have relinquished my positions in the company. The children are ready, they’re bringing the company up to speed in terms of technology. Besides, I am tired."

There must be something about the travel industry that makes people want to stay despite the frustrations involved. For Dading, inbound travel or getting the tourists to visit this crazy country, has always been her passion. It was her mission then and it is her son Jojo’s mission now.

"I’ve always believed that tourism is the one industry that will help the country’s economy," she says. "In reality, outbound travel is doing better because of the current situation. With Aileen doing the marketing support, it is the most promising of the group of companies because the inbound market is subject to external forces like political and economic stability. But inbound tourism is the one in my heart."

Jose "Jojo" Clemente III, 32, is general manager of Rajah Tours and VP of Trans-Inter. He started his training one summer when he was still a business administration student at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California. Training under Alice San Juan earned him P50 a day, which was less than what he was getting waiting on tables abroad, which he did to augment his allowance. The tips he got as a waiter were good but the job made his mother cry, so he went home instead and trained here.

Alexander, who’s the director of sales and marketing of the San Francisco office, was unfortunately not here to defend himself when his mother jested, "Alexander is the wild card. He’s the one who will make me rich or make me poor." Or as Jojo puts it, Alexander at 31 is "the typical middle child" bursting with energy. The Rajah Tours SFO office has expanded its services from being just a Philippine tour wholesaler to a seller of international air travel, European tour packages, American and European cruise packages and even African safaris.

Mari-len, 29, is Rajah Group’s assistant vice president for finance. Unlike her siblings, she didn’t go directly into the family business when she graduated with a degree in business administration and accountancy from UP. She spent two years getting her feet wet at SGV & Co. as a staff member in its Economic, Financial and Consulting Group. A ninth placer in the board exam of 1994, Mari-len was involved in the preparation of business plans, information memoranda, market and financial feasibility studies of projects in health, telecom, banking, steel and real estate industries.

"My long-term plan was to join Rajah after gaining experience outside. I decided to join Rajah while my parents were still very active so I was able to learn a lot from them."

Aileen, 27, handles the marketing side of the companies and is general manager of Rajah Travel’s Makati branch. A product of UP (she was the youngest president of the UP Junior Marketing Association) and St. Mary’s in California, Aileen encouraged the Rajah management to set up a separate division for marketing and upgrade the inter- and intra- company systems and enhance corporate strategies.

Aileen likens the situation at Rajah to remodeling a house. "Our parents built the foundation, and we’re here to make sure it stands better during these difficult times."

Dading’s retirement means two transitions in the company. The first is her handing to the second generation the corporate reins; the second, according to Aileen Clemente, "is to bring it to a more corporate level."

She explains, "There’s always that transition from being a small to a big company, a separation of ownership and management, like the companies of Aboitizes and the Ayalas. The head of the company or the managers may or may not be family members. It will depend on who’s best for the job and the company. We really take all our stakeholders – the employees, clients, customers and owners – into consideration in everything that we do."

Indeed, while other travel agencies have had to downsize operations, Rajah did not have to lay off employees during these years of economic crises. Mari-len says since the company has five different corporations, people were given the option to transfer to offices that needed additional manpower.

Despite the funk the travel industry is in, the Clemente children foresee expansion in the future. A self-described "calculated risk taker," Jojo Clemente is looking at expansion on a global scale. Within 10 years, he hopes that Rajah will have a stronger international presence, perhaps offices in Europe, and in Australia or New Zealand.

Despite their being part-Dading (the risk taker) and part-Joe Clemente (the conservative) in assessing risks, there isn’t really much difference between the vision of Dading and their own. Says Jojo, "We want to continue being an innovator in the industry and the leading company in Philippine tourism."

"We’re still following the tradition of servicing the full spectrum of travel," says Aileen. "As somebody said, tourism is usually seen in pieces, but with Rajah it’s travel in all its spectrum – from inbound to outbound to conventions, etc."

As GM of Rajah Travel’s Makati branch, Aileen is concentrating on servicing corporate clients to make sure the company has a "diverse market" – from the high-yield but unstable market segment to the low-yield but stable segment.

The kids are also making sure they are staying true to their parents’ principles and learning from both their successes and mistakes. Jojo elaborates, "From my mom, I learned that service is number one. The clients pay you for something they expect and you should over-deliver services to establish loyalty – if not with the consumer himself, with the company they book with. From my dad, I learned diplomacy in dealing with the different kinds of people you encounter in the industry. My problem is that I wear my heart on my sleeve – I got this from my mom, I guess. With my dad, on the other hand, he might not like a person but he wouldn’t show it."

Marilen says, "I also learned from my parents how to deal with employees. That one must not look at things only from the financial perspective but to look from their point of view, and how we can help them."

When it comes to management style, Jojo is more for "empowerment" of employees than a centralized setup. "We’re a big company now and delegation is important since you can’t do everything on your own anyway. During my parents’ time, the company required a more hands-on management. I’m more loose with the way I manage; I let the managers do the managing."

Thankfully, all they inherited from Dading are sound business strategies and the guts to dream big, and that none of them got her habit of packing her own bed sheets and towels even when she’s in the world’s more expensive hotels. Aileen, a backpacker, can sleep anywhere, while Jojo and Mari-len don’t mind expensive hotel sheets.

Even if Dading insists that all decisions will be made by her children and that in a year or two they will compose the board of directors and elect their own officers (Joe Clemente was chairman and president of the Rajah corporations until last year), she will still be there to advice them.

So what happens if the second-generation Clementes decide on something she does not agree with? "I always defer to the higher power," Jojo says grinning at his mom.