We are AUÁ

My professional path went another way, but it grew from a very similar root: care.

I am a speech-language pathologist trained at UNCISAL, in Brazil, a specialist in Orofacial Myology from CEFAC, also in Brazil, and hold a master's in Medical Speech-Language Pathology from Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions, in the United States. I built my career across two countries without ever drifting from my own roots. Today I work as a hospital speech-language pathologist at UCHealth Memorial Hospital, in Colorado, a level I trauma centre.

The close attention, the listening, the responsibility and the sensitivity to notice what often goes unseen but can matter so much inside an ICU were built early, in the upbringing I had at home, deepened in my training and matured by everything that came after.

And it was the same with hospitality.

While building my career in healthcare outside Brazil, I discovered new ways of travelling and of staying, and I followed the transformation of short-term rentals closely, first in Europe and then in the United States. I watched that market grow, become professional, take on technology and develop new ways of pricing, managing and hosting.

At the same time, I was living that reality as an owner, managing my own properties in Alagoas from a distance.

I got things wrong, I got things right, I studied, I changed processes and I learned a great deal in practice. I also met people who grew with me, learned with me and taught me. That is how I came to understand, more and more, that good hosting and good management neither begin nor end at the booking.

All of this was happening while I was also deepening my training in healthcare, facing the challenge of an international master's, and carrying the daily responsibility of working with people and lives that asked for my whole presence.

Perhaps that is why I have never seen hospitality as merely an operation. And I have never seen a trip as merely a change of place.

Travelling, for me, is living new experiences, making memories, meeting other cultures, widening the way we see the world and coming back a little different from how we left. But it is also discovering the value of knowing where home is.

However many places I have known and however far life has taken me, some things still have the power to bring me back: the sound of the sea, the smell of salt, the light, the flavours, and that hard-to-explain feeling of recognising a place as your own.

Perhaps that is why I care so much about the experience of the people who arrive in Alagoas. I do not want someone merely to stay. I want them to find a little of what makes this land remain inside those who were born here, even when they are far away.

In time, family, friends and people close to me started asking whether I could bring that same eye to their properties. For a long while I chose not to, precisely because I understood the responsibility of receiving another owner's trust.

Until I realised that being asked also said something about the way I had chosen to do things. It was from that realisation that AUÁ began to take shape.

When Victor and I decided to bring our experiences together and turn all of it into a company, a lot happened in a short time. But AUÁ had been under construction for years. In the roots, in the care, in the studying, in the people, in the mistakes, in the things that went right, and in that constant wish to do better.

AUÁ was born from the possibility of bringing together results and care, technology and closeness, professionalism and humanity. And of doing, for other owners, what I spent years learning to do for myself.

I have always had a strong relationship with organisation, planning and the wish to understand how things can work better. I hold a bachelor's degree in Accounting, a training that sharpened my eye for numbers, management and results, but that also taught me that behind every decision there are resources, responsibilities and people.

My professional path also shaped much of how I think today. I worked in accounting audit, an environment where I learned to observe details, analyse information carefully and understand the importance of processes, controls and transparency. I also worked as a buyer, which put me directly in touch with managing resources, negotiating and making decisions, always looking to balance quality, need and responsibility towards what was being managed.

Those experiences taught me to look at management more completely. Numbers are essential, but over time I saw that no management really works once it stops seeing the people and what sits behind each decision.

When we talk about a property, for instance, I cannot see only square metres, nightly rates or a position on a booking platform. There is investment, work, expectation and responsibility involved. For an owner, handing a property to someone else to manage takes trust. And for a guest, that same place can be part of a trip remembered for many years.

The idea of creating AUÁ came first from Mayra, my business partner. She was the one who saw the possibility of turning that care into a company. When we started developing the idea together, we understood that we did not want to create just another short-term rental manager. We wanted to build a company we ourselves, as owners, would trust with what is ours.

That is how the line “from one owner to another” stopped being a way of talking about the brand and became exactly where we come from.

From that idea, we built AUÁ step by step. We brought into the company what we believe in: care for the property, transparency with the owner, attention to detail, intelligence in management, and a hospitality that does not treat the guest as just another booking.

AUÁ was born precisely from that meeting. The meeting of management and hospitality. Of the responsibility of someone handing over a property and the expectation of someone choosing a place to stay. Of the intelligence it takes to manage a property well and the care it takes to make someone feel welcome.

Today, AUÁ stands for the way we believe rental management should happen: with strategy, technology and market intelligence, but without losing the human eye and the attention to detail.

We built an Alagoas company that looks after each property individually, working to add value to it, to preserve what belongs to the owner and, at the same time, to prepare every space to welcome whoever arrives.

For me, AUÁ became the embodiment of what we have believed from the start: caring for places so that they gain value, welcome people and stay in the memory.