Horatio Expands Operations to Honduras, Aims at Healthcare

Nearshore BPO provider Horatio is building a large contact center in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula where it plans to hire around 1,000 employees over the coming years.

“What we are building there is not a traditional call center,” Chief Executive Officer José Herrera told Nearshore Americas. The new campus will include hundreds of workstations along with game rooms where employees can unwind during breaks. Workers will receive free meals and snacks prepared by chefs as well as free transportation and wellness programs.

The broader goal, Herrera said, is to create “an environment where people genuinely want to come to work every day.”

Creating a different kind of workplace has become a major part of Horatio’s business strategy. At the company’s offices in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, employees have access to facilities such as yoga spaces and wellness-focused areas.

“Horatio has been consistently ranked as a Top 10 best workplace in the Dominican Republic, and we are genuinely excited about the opportunity to bring that same culture and employee experience to Honduras,” he said.

Asked whether he was concerned about gang violence in Honduras, he said: “We don’t dismiss the question, but what you experience on the ground is quite different from the narrative. We’d encourage people not to read too much into the headlines.”

For years, San Pedro Sula was infamously known as the “murder capital of the world,” marred by organized crime. But it has dropped from top global homicide rankings in recent years, reflecting the government’s efforts to improve citizen security. According to the Mexico-based Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, San Pedro exited its list of the 50 most violent cities in the world in 2024.

Herrera said Horatio has longer-term plans to expand into Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, where, until a few years ago, almost no foreign BPO firms operated because of security concerns.

Rising Opportunities in U.S. Healthcare 

Horatio’s expansion into Honduras comes as the company boosts its push into the U.S. healthcare outsourcing market.

Healthcare in the United States is not only expensive but also tightly regulated. That complexity has created huge demand for specialist outsourcing providers. Many companies in the sector rely on BPO firms to help manage compliance requirements and daily operations.

Horatio launched earlier this year a platform for healthcare clients, HoratioHX, which manages tasks ranging from appointment scheduling and insurance verification to billing and patient engagement. The company is also organizing seminars and training sessions to help employees better understand how to work in the sector.

Healthcare already represents 40% of Horatio’s total workforce and revenue. “We work with a growing number of clients across the sector, and we expect that share to continue growing as demand for compliant, high-quality CX in regulated environments increases,” Herrera added.

According to Fortune Business Insights, North America alone accounted for nearly 50% of global healthcare BPO demand in 2025. This year, the market in this region is projected to grow to $210 billion.

Healthcare is personal for Herrera. As the child of a biotechnician mother and a pediatrician father, he grew up seeing firsthand the tough balance between delivering patient care while managing the behind-the-scenes of the business.

Herrera co-founded Horatio with two former classmates from Columbia Business School — Alex Ross and Jared Karson. The company currently employs around 3,500 people across its delivery centers in the Dominican Republic, Colombia and the United States.