However, sorting the good deals from the bad ones is a job best left to someone with a deep knowledge of the local scene, even more so if you're a first-time visitor. Dan Babush, founder and president of Rent in Rio, a branch of Global Action Outfitters, Inc. A Wharton School graduate with an MBA in real estate business, Dan first visited Brazil in the early 1980s as a Citibank Vice-President in c
harge of problem transactions and litigations. Upon leaving Citibank in 1985, he founded Global Action Outfitters, Inc., already as an experienced Brazil traveler with plenty of information about the Rio de Janeiro rental business. Global Action Outfitters was one of the first rental agencies on the internet and it stays at the top of search engine results with over 660,000 page views a year. The company also operates in Miami and Europe. Backed by an impressive knowledge of Rio neighborhoods, safety issues, culture and quirks, which he shares with some outbursts of very fluent Portuguese and only a slight accent, Dan is a man who believes in his trade and lives it from the client's point of view. "I always wanted the feel of what it's like to be in Brazil," he says. It also helped me perfect my Portuguese, as I had to use it to deal with situations as they came up. "Vacation rental is a unique product," says Dan. "Apartments are great deals in relation to hotels." If you do it right, that is – and Dan has much to say about what a reliable agent can do to help tourists have a great time in Rio. He should know: "In all the years I’ve been traveling to Brazil, I’ve never stayed in a hotel but once."
