Travel Masterclass Panelists

Victoria McQuillan, Affiliate & Partner Manager, MyTravel
MyTravel is one of the UK’s foremost holiday and leisure groups. MyTravel is now part of Thomas Cook PLC, following the recent merger between the 2 groups. Victoria has been with MyTravel for 9 years and in her time working at the company Victoria has been responsible for the launch of all 13 MyTravel Group affiliate programmes, which have enjoyed considerable success since their inception.

Craig Kent, Marketing Manager, Olympic Holidays
Established 40 years ago, Olympic Holidays is the market leader in holiday packages & flights to Greece & Cyprus. Craig has overseen the affiliate programme since its launch in January 2007. Prior to his role at Olympic Holidays, Craig worked at long haul travel operators Travelpack & Austravel with 5 years in between at BCP Airport Parking as Travel Trade Marketing Manager, where his responsibilities included maximising sales from trade website links, including operators & airlines.

Gary Phillips, E-Commerce Manager, Balkan Holidays
Balkan Holidays is the leading specialist holiday tour operator to Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Serbia and Romania. Gary has been working in the travel industry for 12 years and has experience of running his own affiliate sites, which has given him great insight into the affiliate industry.

Balkan Holidays have a diverse range of products, including an extensive winter ski programme.

Jacqueline Shalks, Head of Marketing, Reserveahotelonline.com
Reserveahotelonline is one of the most competitive online accommodation providers offering over 30,000 hotels worldwide from budget to 5* luxury. Jacqueline has been with Reserveahotelonline for just under 3 years and in that time the company has enjoyed considerable growth. In the last 12 months alone, Reserveahotelonline has tripled the number of monthly bookings and doubled its size in internal staff resources.

Jacqueline’s blog can be found at: http://jaxatreserveahotelonline.blogspot.com/

Jo Ellis, Affiliate Marketing Manager, Superbreak
Jo has been working at Superbreak since June 2007, having begun her career in travel taking teams of up to 150 cricket, hockey and rugby players to Barbados (AffiliateFuture’s very own Pete Dickenson included!). She then moved on to airport parking (APH) as the National Sales Manager responsible for all online and offline relationships and joined Superbreak’s online marketing team in June of this year.

Superbreak is a leading seller of hotel packages, theatre breaks and concert breaks.

Paul Riches, Sales & Marketing Director, Youtravel.com
Paul began his career in Travel with Club 18-30 Holidays, before taking a permanent UK position in sales and marketing for ILG (International Leisure Group). Paul then worked with Panorama Holidays as Sales Manager and Cosmos as Sales & Marketing Director, before joining Libra Holidays in 2001 as Sales & Marketing Director. Paul joined the Youtravel group as Sales & Marketing Director in 2006 and has since been instrumental in establishing Youtravel.com as an accommodation only supplier throughout Europe, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

David Lewis, Business Development Manager, Holiday Extras
David has worked for Holiday Extras for the last 7 years. He currently runs the business development team who operate across a variety of markets including airport parking, airport hotels, travel insurance, London theatre breaks and UK theme park breaks. David has been responsible for setting up a number of affiliate marketing deals for products within the HX Group. Recently, HX has acquired BCP, its closest airport parking competitor, and David has been involved in the consolidation of these two businesses and maximising the potential earnings from the ancillary channel for both HX and BCP partners.

Peter McAree, Commercial Director, Auto Europe UK
Peter has over 29 years experience in the car hire business, most of which was spent at Avis. He has now been Commercial Director of Auto Europe UK for the past year, during which time the company has seen rapid expansion of their services to now include over 4,000 locations world-wide.

For over 50 years, Auto Europe has been a leader in worldwide car rental services. They also offer a diverse range of additional products, including 4 and 5* European hotels, chauffeur and transfer services, prestige and sports car hire, mobile phone, GPS and motor home rentals.

Louise Bryan, Training & Development Manager, Rock Insurance
Louise has had over 15 years experience in the Insurance sector, previously working with City Bond. Louise moved to Rock Insurance 6 months ago and is now responsible for marketing their various travel related products.

Rock Insurance Services are the fastest growing travel insurance intermediary, providing state of the art solutions with own branded quotation and policy fulfillment online. Rock is managed by an experienced team who bring combined expertise from both the travel and insurance sectors.

Renaldo Scheepers, CEO, A2Btransfers.com
A2Btransfers.com is one of the leading holiday transfer companies in the United Kingdom. Prior to working with A2Btransfers.com, Renaldo was Product Manager of Travel Bargains and was then involved in the launch of medhotels.com. Renaldo left his position as Head of Product for Global Hotels (medhotels.com) to set up A2Btransfers.com and, following the company’s launch in 2005, sales have surpassed all expectations.

Alastair Hay-Campbell, Sales Manager Southern England, Singapore Airlines
For the past seven years Alastair has been an integral part of the Singapore Airlines UK management team, primarily in Sales & Marketing roles. Currently, he manages a large sales team responsible for both corporate & leisure sales to key markets in Asia, Australia and New Zealand from the UK. In December this year, Alastair is due to move to Singapore as part of a promotion to a more senior role in network revenue management at Singapore Airlines Head Office.

Singapore Airlines continues to be one of the most innovative airlines in the industry, having recently launched the first ever Airbus A380 scheduled service between Singapore and Sydney.

Anton Grossmann, Sales Manager UK Southern Region, Malaysia Airlines
Malaysia Airlines is a leading carrier from the UK to the Far East, Australia and New Zealand.

Anton has over 30 years experience in Airline sales. Previously with Singapore Airlines, he moved 18 years ago to Malaysia Airlines where he is the principal Sales Manager in the UK. Anton continues to be a high profile figure in the industry, particularly within the UK travel trade.

Geoff Waters, Product Manager, Thomas Cook
Geoff is one of the longest serving members at Thomas Cook with a career spanning 42 years. During this period Geoff has been largely responsible for Thomas Cook’s scheduled air suppliers and related businesses. Additionally, Geoff was responsible for originally setting up the extremely successful Thomas Cook Flightsavers operation.

Thomas Cook remains one of the leading sellers of air product in the UK.

James Blake, Sales & Marketing Manager, Asiana Airlines
James is the key Sales & Marketing contact for Asiana Airlines in the UK, Ireland & the Nordic region. He also chairs the UK STAR Alliance Sales Committee comprising of over 17 Sales Managers from the various STAR Alliance member airlines.

Asiana Airlines is renowned for excellent customer service. Key markets from the UK include Korea, Japan, China and Australia.

Dan Morley, Alpharooms/Transferstore, Partnerships Manager
Alpharooms.com is one of the UK’s leading websites for discount Hotels, Apartments & Transfers world-wide. Dan works with Alpharooms.com and Transferstore in an e-commerce role, originally tasked with affiliate management. He has recently been promoted to take on a broader role encompassing management of all partnerships. Prior to this, Dan spent two years working at Sim4Travel as an Affiliate Manager.

Andy Washington, Sales & Distribution Director, Cosmos
Andy Washington is Sales & Distribution Director at Cosmos Holidays, Avro, Somewhere2stay.com and Cosmos Tourama; part of the award winning Cosmos group of companies offering holidays, flights, accommodation and tours. The Cosmos group is part of the Globus family of brands, which has been around for 80 years.

Andy has always worked in the travel industry and has been at Cosmos over 6 years now. A few years ago, at age 29, Andy joined the Board of Directors. It’s an exciting time at the company as the Group has been going from strength to strength. Most recently Cosmos Holidays won the TTG 2007 Short Haul Tour Operator of the Year Award and Cosmos Tourama won the Travel Trust Association Award for Best Coach Operator for the fifth year running.