Interview: Roman Šubert

There´s something about being on the move that intrigues Roman Šubert.

“It´s hard for people to fool me, because I´ve seen it all,” the Prague native declares with a smile.

His current position as managing director for the Czech Republic´s branch office of AGS International Movers (a company with 140 offices globally) allows him an involvement, albeit less directly, in those traveling abroad. But almost 20 years ago, Šubert was at the heart of the burgeoning travel business in a young, travel-hungry Czech Republic.

Though he prefers not to return to his more volatile, entrepreneurial days, it would have been hard to avoid an entanglement with the self-employment world. Šubert´s father influenced him a great deal in this respect, having established his own shipping business, a move that brought about Šubert´s own first business in 1991, also a shipping venture. Excited about the prospects of self-employment, Šubert encouraged his wife to get in on the action, and that same year they founded East West Travel.

Starting up a second business was rather simple, Šubert admits, once he realized that “90 percent of the core business is the same, and the rest is only different according to the field you are in, and this knowledge you get to have pretty easily.”

Eventually, Šubert and his wife were running the two businesses out of one tiny, 20-sqm room that served as their office where clients could come in to talk.

What amuses and fascinates Šubert as he reminisces is the advance in communications technology since that time, which now allow him to “get connected” anytime from anywhere he travels. Back in the early post-communist days, Šubert said they used only a telex machine, and getting a phone connection to Hungary (where one business partner resided) from Prague was rather tough: The call could only be made before 8 a.m. or after 5 p.m.

But starting from scratch paid off, and “through good ideas” and also by offering the first charters to places like Egypt and Portugal, East West Travel became one of the top five tour companies in the Czech Republic. Šubert was able to travel to countries, for both business and leisure that he had never dreamed of venturing to.

At the peak of his business, in 1996, Šubert came into contact with the owner of one of the country´s largest travel agencies, Čedok, who was interested in buying out Šubert´s charter agency, which focused more on air charters than did Čedok. But the sudden bankruptcy of the airline that Šubert usually booked for his company´s tours was financially disastrous for East West Travel, and he no longer had a company to offer to Čedok. Still, Šubert´s expertise in exclusive charter travel was a definite asset to a company like Čedok, and he was asked to join and create an “Exclusive Travel” department.

When Šubert took over at Čedok, the company was seeing 50,000 clients a year, and when he left three years later, the numbers were up to 85,000.

“I had to change the mentality of people there. I spoke individually with each person, explaining where we were going, and listened to their ideas. Then we were able to set a much better footprint on the market,” he explained about his management strategy.

But as all good things come to an end, so did Šubert´s term with Čedok, when a new general manager stepped in and Šubert said “the chemistry just didn´t work.” So where does one go after already having been in the travel business for over 10 years? Outside of the travel business, according to Šubert.

“It´s too small, and there´s nowhere to go,” he says.

In Šubert´s case, he found an opportunity to work as the PR manager for AAA, a used car dealer.

“Because I like cars,” he laughs. “And I had been doing PR all of my life,” he adds more seriously.

What was especially interesting to Šubert was the AAA´s status as a “controversial” company, a status apparently given to all used car dealers in the Czech Republic.

“So what could be better than a PR manager at a controversial company?” he points out. And truly, his time at AAA provided him a “fantastic challenge and a great lesson. I had a pretty wide scope of things I could do. Not only solving crises, which you can never learn in any school. The owner told us, ‘The budget for PR is endless.´ Sounded like a dream come true! There was hardly a day when we wouldn´t come up with an idea. It was definitely fun, and these are two years that are tattooed in my soul.”

After leaving AAA, Šubert moved onto a three-year stint as Marketing and PR manager at General Motors, where he encountered a much more corporate atmosphere. But then as it often happens, the company shifted things around, and Šubert found himself looking for another position, which led him to his current role at AGS.

Now, as he meets clients from all over the world, Šubert happily finds his work to be very diverse. “It´s not like making a thousand yogurts a day,” he points out. Šubert´s clients are mainly diplomats and ambassadors from abroad, but his branch also does corporate moves. Altogether, 20 percent of his branch´s clients are inbound, moving into the Czech Republic; 70 percent are outbound, while the other 10 percent require only storage services.

For Šubert, someone with an admiration for architecture and design, moving ambassadors into and out of their stately, richly ornate villas and mansions is fascinating work. Of course, while eyeing the scenery, Šubert is busy applying the suavity of his long years of PR experience to make the diplomats feel entirely at ease and thoroughly informed about the moving process.

A process that is an art in itself, and a costly one at that. The expenses of a first class quality move, such as AGS offers, depends on quite a few variables, such as the time involved in packing and unpacking, the traveling distance and means of transport. However, some clients, particularly those of a diplomatic stature, have items of such high value that special crates must be tailor-made for each item. The time for the carpenters to build the crates, the cost of the wood—all of this adds to the expense of the move.

During his two-and-a-half years with AGS, Šubert´s eyes have been opened to the varying nature of human possessions. In particular, he has noticed differences between inbound corporate clients who are older and outbound Czech professionals, who tend to be younger.

“With the expats coming here, you see many possessions gathered through generations. With the Czech professionals, it is their first opportunity to travel for business abroad. And so they are usually young and come from different parts of the country and have a high mortgage.”

He has been witness to an intriguing range of his clients´ valuable treasures, be it a Ming Dynasty vase or a picture drawn by the client´s 4-year-old child.

“But some secrets I will not spill even on my deathbed,” he confesses with a mysterious grin.