Speaker Biographies

Bruno Rodriguez is specialized in helping companies improve sales and lower costs by embracing cloud applications. He has over 15 years of experience in the IT sector, especially around Web 2.0, Software as a Service and Cloud business models. He joined Anboto in 2011 as Sales director, and previously had senior management positions in Panda Security, driving their Cloud business, and Euskaltel.

With over 30 years experience working in the technology sector, Chris has seen all the major technology changes over the years. Drawing from his experience working for some of the world’s leading firms such as HP,Outsourcery, Sun Systems and Oracle, Chris today pioneers the Cloud Business Unit at Commensus.

SiteMinder's is a multi award winning online distribution company whose products are trusted and used by thousands of accommodation providers in over 90 countries worldwide to help increase online revenue, streamline business process and drive down the cost of acquisition. The cloud based product suite continues to set the benchmark in online distribution technology by challenging conventional operating strategies. SiteMinder is redefining distribution.Bernhard is at the forefront of the distribution of hotel rooms, and has assisted many hotels, both chains and independents, to connect their CRS/PMS directly to the world’s leading booking websites to help increase online revenue potential whilst driving down the cost of acquisitions. He has seen SiteMinder grow from its Australian origins to a truly global player, with over 5,000 properties in more than 90 countries.

A true advocate for the customer, Lynn Barnhart is passionate about listening to the ‘voice of the customer’ for requirements to ensure products, programs and initiatives appropriately  raise awareness, drive demand, support the brand and articulate value propositions. Her 25+ year career in travel spans outside sales, strategic/business planning, marketing and product management experience which puts her in a unique position to successfully bridge communication from the technical stakeholders to the non-technical ensuring tangible, measurable and profitable results. Lynn has both delivered and enabled millions of dollars in revenue generating and/or cost saving products/ plans for billion dollar companies such as Sabre Holdings, Motorola and Freeman and is considered your 'go to' subject matter expert. She joined RightNow in May 2011 as the Global Director, Travel Industry Marketing and is responsible for driving market share leadership in these industry verticals. She earned her MBA from The University of Dallas and her bachelor's degree from Iowa State University while on a swimming scholarship.

Graeme Benstead-Hume heads up conversion and data analysis at SiteVisibility. With 7-years of experience working across the digital industry in roles spanning from user interface design and development to digital marketing management and online conversion analyst Graeme has worked with a range of clients to help them to grow both search and social channels and capitalise on existing traffic sources.

Mark Bloxham has joined the board of Teletext Holidays and been promoted to the position of marketing director. He joined Teletext Holidays as head of marketing in October 2009. He is responsible for building the Teletext Holidays’ brand as it moves towards a digital future through high profile online and offline marketing campaigns and partnerships. Before joining Teletext Holidays, Mark was head of marketing for Kaplan Professional UK, a subsidiary of the Washington Post group. He has held senior marketing positions within the financial services, recruitment and leisure industries including six years at Thomas Cook. He said: “Teletext Holidays is entering a new era and it’s great time to be involved in developing a new strategic direction for the brand. We are building a new website with market leading technology as we look to drive more business online. At the same time we are building partnerships with other retail brands such as Tesco which take us onto the high street for the first time.” “The Teletext Holidays brand has become synonymous with good value last-minute travel deals.We are a trusted and objective voice in the market and that gives us a huge opportunity to talk to customers directly through social networks and e-marketing.” Teletext Holidays can be accessed online at www.teletextholidays.co.uk and freeview channel 101 where visitors can search and compare from millions of holiday offers, including packages, cruises, flights, hotel and villa deals from over 200 of the UK’s leading tour operators.

Jo has worked in several ecommerce roles over the last 13 years, starting online life at Virgin.net back in 1998. Six years ago Jo joined TUI Travel plc as online marketing manager responsible for web acquisition strategy across a portfolio of premium travel brands. More recently Jo moved on to a sector ecommerce role to take on the challenge of managing and advising on paid search strategy for TUI’s entire Specialist and Activity division – currently comprising some 105 companies. In this role Jo also identified an opportunity to create an internal search agency team to provide specialist resource to many of the brands within this sector.

Based in Google's London office, Nate Bucholz has advised the company's largest travel clients for a number of years in North America and Europe. As Industry Head for UK Travel, he leads the air and car hire team, providing recommendations for advertising strategy and working with companies to profitably grow their business. Nate holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley.

Ian is responsible for thetrainline’s International activities including developing sales outside the UK market and securing access to European Railway content to sell through thetrainline’s sale channels. Ian has worked for thetrainline since 2004 in various commercial roles, such as managing relationships with the major UK TMCs and developing business with UK Train Companies. Prior to joining thetrainline, Ian was Head of Distribution at Eurostar.

Graham founded QuBit in 2010 to help companies understand their data and ultimately solve marketing & website inefficiencies. Prior to QuBit, Graham worked at Google as the Global Leader on their eCommerce effectiveness strategy, focused on development of Google Analytics, as well as Google’s internal strategy to develop an ecosystem to improve websites. Graham is a technology enthusiast, with a fixation on how to bring great product development together with effective business solutions. He started at Google in the early days and worked on initiatives across the organisation to help improve the effectiveness of the AdWords platform for its customers. Prior to Google Graham ran a number of businesses from building technology specialised in transmitting video and music over IP to a record label.

Nick has over 20 years of experience in sales and marketing, predominantly dealing in the technology sector. He has worked with businesses of all sizes from small businesses and start-ups to large corporations. He has witnessed first-hand the development of the internet, having worked with what was to become a major pan-European ISP at a time when inexpensive broadband connectivity for the home and quality streaming media were a dream and aspiration for the future. He now heads up the sales and marketing department at AdInsight, and believes that whatever the size of a business, quality web analytics data is the key to ensuring that digital marketing budgets are utilised as effectively as possible.

Andy has been building websites since ’96. As Technical Director at Euro RSCG Circle, where he worked with Peugeot, VisitBritain and Guinness, where he followed the dot com bubble up and down. For the past 9 years he has been founding director at True Clarity, a lean and agile technical agency, which works hard delivering large complex websites, mostly built on the Sitecore CMS platform for easyJet, Dyson, Sophos, The Conservatives and Saga Travel.

Peter began his travel industry career 30 years ago as Southern area Sales Manager with Fred Olsen cruise lines and commenced his hotel career over 26 years ago with the former Norfolk Capital Hotels Group as Area Sales & Marketing Director looking after six prestigious country house hotels in the UK. In 1991 He joined Marriott International as Director of Agency Sales EMEA; responsible for corporate travel agency sales throughout Europe, the Middle East & Africa and in 1993 was promoted to the position of Interactive Sales & Marketing Director where he was responsible for Global Distribution System (GDS) connectivity and development of the Marriott.com Internet project throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Jamie Evans has over 11 years’ experience of working within the acquiring industry, his current position, as Head of Open Market-UK Corporate Sales at Barclaycard Global Payment Acceptance, involves leading a team responsible for working with large multi – channel merchants. The previous eight years have been in customer facing roles within Barclaycard GPA. In this time Jamie has developed specialism’s across new business and relationship management with a specific focus on the Hospitality and Leisure sector, in particularly travel. Jamie’s last role involved developing new customer relationships for Barclaycard Payment Acceptance; working with our largest, strategic accounts from the initial discussion stage and throughout the tender and implementation phases.

Simon Ferguson joined Travelport in September 2011 as Managing Director for the UK & Ireland, Travelport’s second largest country territory. Prior to this he spent 20 years in business and consumer media, in a range of senior management positions. During 8 years as Chief Executive of the Travel Weekly group, he developed gazetteers.com, the UK’s largest online information resource for travel agents, and founded and launched Travolution, the leading media brand for the online travel sector. In 2009 he led a management buyout of Travel Weekly from FTSE-100 company Reed Elsevier. Prior to the travel industry, Simon spent 8 years in technology media, launching the UK’s first online B2B e-commerce platform for the IT sector in 1998. With a passion for travel, technology and media, Simon believes leading Travelport’s UK business into its next phase is one of the most exciting challenges in today’s industry.

Prior to founding SilverRail in 2009, Aaron built one of the largest travel technology companies in the US: National Leisure Group (NLG), a $1bn ecommerce leader in vacations & cruise. NLG pioneered several early online travel technologies including the cruise industry’s first online booking engine. Previously, Aaron honed his survival skills in US Army’s 82nd Airborne and at global management consultancy Bain & Company. Aaron was also a founding member of General Catalyst Partners, a leading venture capital firm in Boston.

Jonathan has inexhaustible energy for IT and a high level of expertise in troubleshooting, leadership & creating business miracles. Jonathan is able to draw on his industry connections and established partners to provide applications and solutions to business objectives; delivering on time and within budget. He operates at the highest level within Zolv, presenting a business savvy face to advanced technical solutions. Zolv’s Web Travel Platform has revolutionised the way online travel is sold and Jonathan’s experience is pushing Zolv forward and to the top of their game.

After graduating from Herriot-Watt University with an honours degree in computer science in 1972, Peter has spent almost his entire career in the Travel Technology sector covering cargo shipments, tour operating, airlines & hotels, including Meetings & Events.

In August 2009 the acquisition of Travel Weekly from Reed Elsevier was completed and Travel Weekly Group Limited was formed, with Duncan Horton appointed as CEO – Gazetteers.com. In December 2011 Duncan was promoted to the role of Chief Executive of the Travel Weekly Group Limited. Prior to this, Duncan was CEO of Freeads Classifieds Limited, the UK’s largest independent online classifieds site. He has also held senior positions with lastminute.com and Holiday Autos. He has extensive experience in general management/online business development in the UK and across Europe, and wide experience within online travel and internet start-ups. Duncan has detailed knowledge of high volume e-commerce and search engine marketing and was a member of the Client Advisory Board for Hitwise for several years.

John joined Multicom in 2006 as Operations Manager taking on his current role 4 years ago. John’s strong leadership and technical skills have been instrumental in Multicom’s sustained growth over recent years. His previous employment working as Systems administrator and developer gives him an unparalleled understanding of all technical aspects of the business: His ability to translate these intricacies into layman’s terms has led to many successful sales.

Tim's background is in software development, consultancy, and mobile product management. In recent years he has worked on some of the UK's most successful and popular mobile services in transport and travel for clients including Transport for London, thetrainline and Stansted Airport. His current activities are focused on defining and building a wide-ranging integrated suite of mobile products for Somo.

Prior to SilverRail, Cameron spent 7+years at Expedia where he held a number of positions in Asia Pacific and Europe focusing on both Supplier Relations and B2B Distribution.Most recently Cameron lead Business Development for EMEA for Expedia’s Affiliate Network. Cameron also served on the board of directors of Nasdaq-listed eLong,Inc.,a leading online travel provider in China, from 2004 to 2007.

Christoph Klenner is the Secretary General of the European Technology & Travel Services Association (ETTSA), which groups global distribution systems and major online travel companies. Previously, Christoph was a Partner at The Prisma Consulting Group, Brussels/Geneva. He advised, amongst others, Apax Partners, Boeing Co., the British Business and General Aviation Association, Expedia.com, Japan Air Lines, and P&O/DP World. Prior to that, Christoph worked in the CEO's office at MALEV Hungarian Airlines. A graduate of the University of Maastricht and Budapest University, Christoph is a member of the Royal Aeronautical Society, the European Aviation Club, the Chamber of Commerce Belgium-Sweden, and the Belgian-Polish Chamber of Commerce.

He has over 15 years of experience in the Travel industry and has worked in the Hotel, Airline, GDS, Travel Agencies and Travel Technology industries.  Today he leads a team of Partner Managers for the Travel sector in Concur EMEA and is based in Paris, France.

Paul works for Guava’s search engine marketing team as a business development manager. For six years he has worked in various capacities within the technology sector managing relationships with clients and helping to deliver measurable results. This experience has given him an understanding of how to approach the business and technical challenges facing many companies in today’s crowded online market. Today, Paul focuses on working with Guava’s travel and entertainment clients has spoken at events including NMA Live, Travel Tech Europe and TFM&A

Julian Mills has over 20 years’ experience in the corporate, leisure, airline and travel technology industries. He previously held senior management positions with Seaforths Travel, TelMe Farebase, Amadeus and Travelport before taking up the role of CCO at P&P Group in 2011. Julian has played a major role in the introduction of online booking technology on a global basis to both the business and leisure verticals including the launch of the first UK based corporate booking tool in 1995.

As Vice President of Marketing at Traveldoo, Olivier Mindren is responsible for spearheading product strategy and product marketing. Olivier is regularly invited to speak at technology conferences for corporate travel and eProcurement. Olivier Mindren is a graduate in Electrical Engineering from Grenoble Institute of Technology. He also studied electrical engineering at McGill University, economics, finance and political sciences at Sciences PO Grenoble.

Geoff Monk is originally from Nottingham. He attended Leeds Metropolitan University where is gained an HND in hotel management. Starting his travel-related career working in hotels in the UK, USA and Australia, he left the hotel sector to become an agent member of the Global Travel Group in 1996. Initially selling a full range of holidays before identifying the niche potential of the Internet.This led him to set up GlobalCoachTours.com, focusing exclusively on escorted touring. He became a Skype voice user in 2004 and began using the video version soon after it launched in 2006.In August 2010 he registered the domain SeeYourTravelAgent.com and began to research the site. The site went live to the travel trade 1stAugust 2011 and the site has recently gone live with 15 UK agents.Geoff lives in the Derbyshire Dales town of Wirksworth with his wifeSue and dog Coco.

Clare has been in the travel industry for the last 10 years. She comes from a sales and marketing background in design led, soft furnishings and furniture. However, the lure of the rail industry proved too strong. She has been with thetrainline.com since the business solution was launched in 2001. She has a degree in fine art and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Kyle Moser has been instrumental in helping Cornerstone achieve at least a 20% growth in sales each year since he’s been with the company. As Vice-President of Business Development and Consulting, he spends a great deal of time helping clients to leverage the full power of Cornerstone products. He is also one of the key drivers behind Cornerstone’s plans to establish new relationships and transition from a product-oriented company to a service organization. Kyle started his career in 1984 with Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. He went on to take positions with Republic National Bank of New York and Academic Management Services of Providence, Rhode Island. In 1992, Kyle moved to the Indianapolis area to serve as president of America’s Tuition Assistance Corporation, a subsidiary of USA Group, Inc. In 1996, Kyle’s entrepreneurial drive led him to form his own sales-process consulting company and eventually become a founding partner of Creating Buyers, LLC. In that capacity, he served as a sales consultant to Cornerstone in 2004 and liked what he saw. The following year, he joined the team. Kyle holds a bachelor degree in Business administration with a concentration in finance from Adelphi University and an MBA with a concentration in finance from Hofstra University.

During a successful career in the travel industry Clare has built a strong reputation as an expert specialising in sourcing strategic travel solutions. She spent 12 years at Travelport as Head of Customer Sales working with UK and Global Travel Management Companies to deliver leading edge technology for their corporate clients. More recently she held the position of Commercial Director at Capita Business Travel where she led the Account Management team to deliver excellent customer service to their customer portfolios as well as being responsible fo strategic product development. Since starting Bouda, a professional services company specialising in business travel, Clare has helped numerous corporations make the right decisions about suppliers, policy, processes and travel technology.

Jason leads the sales, business development and client services at the Chester Office. After studying Business Management & Marketing at the University of Wales, he has spent the past 20 years working in various senior management roles for brands like Capital Bank, Bank of Scotland, HBoS, Accor Services, and more recently as General Manager for Argos and Homebase as part of The Home Retail Group. In his spare time Jason is a keen sailor and runs a Cheshire based event management company, The Chester Treasure Hunt Company. You may find him out and about meeting new clients and presenting some of the brilliant work we do at Textlocal.

Giles is one of the 3 senior partners in Distribute Travel. He is responsible for developing relationships to open new online distribution channels for UK tour operators and OTAs, including Thomas Cook, On The Beach,On Holiday Group and Lowcost Group. He is a proven travel marketer with over 20 years’ experience in the travel industry both client and agency side. His extensive knowledge of online marketing and travel technology has been key in Distribute Travel’s development of unique travel white label products that are currently being implemented across a network of leading online brands and publishers. His previous positions as Head of Travel at performance advertising network AffiliateFuture, and Head of Sales at Singapore Airlines gave him proven commercial experience at managing large business portfolio’s, as well as winning personal and company awards for services to the travel industry.

With a decade-plus of travel technology and product development experience, Will has built several cutting-edge travel technology products, including NLG’s dynamic vacation packaging system.Nearly anyone using web-based travel products today has seen Will’s genius. If you’ve booked a vacation or cruise through Yahoo Travel, Orbitz, Hotwire, Priceline or Expedia, you’ve touched Will’s technology. Previous to SilverRail, Will had taken the reins as the VP Product Strategy and technical lead at ITA Software.

Andreas Posmeck began his professional career in investment banking in 1993, joining The Chicago Corporation in Chicago, USA. Working for them over a 5-year period, he was based in Chicago, Medellín and Berlin respectively. Between 1990 and 1993 he ran Posmeck & Görtz,a financial information software and marketing company. In 1993 and 1994 he published several trade papers on hedge funds including those for Die Bank trade magazine and one for the Gabler publishing house. In 1996 he founded GIATA GmbH in Kassel, Germany, and has been managing director since 1999. GIATA now employs over 140 staff in its Berlin office. As market leader, GIATA prepares digital text and image data for the majority of well-known tour operators and travel agencies. The company uses this data to create ready-to-use applications for the web, smartphones and iPads. The company has nearly 18,000 customers including tour operators such as TUI, Thomas Cook, Rewe, FTI and Alltours, all the global distribution systems, Internet booking engines such as Amadeus/Traveltainment, Sabre, Traffics and Travel-IT and online travel agents including Expedia, Unister, Opodo and Lastminute. With GIATA’s Real-time Catalogue, tour operators and incoming agents can place their clients' data online. Within a few minutes, content is distributed to reservation systems, websites, television channels and all travel agency branches. In addition GIATA also offers customers GIATA Statistics, a market research tool, which takes into account the current daily shifts in demand in the German market. Since November 2004, GIATA GmbH has also offered translation and copywriting services tailored to the tourism industry. These services are geared towards hotel chains, co-operations and brokers as well as tour operators, offering hotels located in various destinations and reaching out to different source markets. The hotel descriptions, written by native speakers of the given language, are translated into the major European languages, as well as some non-European languages. Since November 2006, GIATA GmbH has offered over 44,000 hotel text descriptions (in 8 languages) as well as Fact Sheets (in a further 39 languages) and hotel images via XML.

Anthony Rawlins is the CEO of Digital Visitor, an award-winning social media agency dedicated to increasing your online conversion rate driving traffic to your website reducing your customer acquisition cost. As one of the leading providers of social media applications for websites, and social media marketing services for travel organisations globally, Anthony and his team at Digital Visitor are having a big impact across the industry. This has been acknowledged and recognised by the distinguished awards Digital Visitor and Anthony have been nominated for, most recently winning Best Online Application at the 2011 Travolution Awards. Anthony is very active on the social media conference circuit most recently presenting at the Travel Distribution Summit Europe, the Online Marketing and Social Media Europe conference and chairing the destination social media track at the Enter 2011 conference in Innsbruck. In the past two years, he has spoken at major global events on all things social media in London, Prague, Amsterdam, Johannesburg, Nairobi, South Africa, and San Francisco. Digital Visitor is proudly working with some of the best brands in the travel and tourism industry including Virgin Holidays, Flight Centre, Multicom, Wazzamba, TopDeck, On Holiday Group, Warner Leisure Hotels, VisitBritain, VisitEngland, Cyprus Paradise, the French Provence tourism board, and many more travel companies and visitor attractions around the world.

Jon Reeve has worked in the business travel and TMC sector for 36 years and has wide ranging experience in all aspects of corporate travel management. He was one of the original design team behind the development of the Evolvi UK rail booking tool, a product focused on the business market with specific strengths surrounding on-line management information, travel policy compliance and ticket fulfilment methodology. As Trade Relations Director for Evolvi, he strongly believes that the inclusion of UK rail travel expenditure should be a key facet of any organisation’s travel programme and that systems technologies should constantly be striving to deliver convenient and cost effective access to the rail product category within a managed purchasing environment.

Paul Richer is Genesys' founding partner. Back in 1994, he had a vision for a management consultancy that would offer the highest professional standards to specifically address the requirement for advice and project services relating to technology in the travel, tourism and hospitality industries.

Paul's background is as a consultancy professional. After qualifying with a Masters Degree in Business Adminstration (MBA) from Cranfield School of Management, he joined Finite Group plc as a management consultant. Finite Group was a blue-chip strategic IT consultancy operating in the automotive, finance and travel industries. As well as management consultancy, Finite was involved in a number of leading edge IT initiatives. Paul rose to the position of Director heading-up Finite's consultancy division. He led some of the consultancy's largest projects for household, blue-chip organisations.

As a result of his consultancy work for many travel, tourism and hospitality organisations, Paul has built an impressive depth of experience of travel technology that is arguably unparalleled in the consultancy world. With the advent of the Internet, Financial Times invited Paul to co-author a seminal piece of work entitled Distribution Technology in the Travel Industry. This report forecast much of what we now take for granted in the travel industry. Following this, Paul was commissioned by the World Tourism Organisation to write an in-depth report - Marketing Destinations Online - Strategies for the Information Age. This set the scene for tourism organisations moving into the online world.

Paul has appeared on radio and television where his expert views on travel technology have been sought. He is regularly quoted in the press and chairs many of the industry's online and technology related conferences.

He is a Fellow of the Institute of Travel & Tourism and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Paul lives in London

Steve has started and run a number of businesses and has worked within the travel industry for the past 15 years, firstly as CEO of Simply Travel and then post Simply Travel's acquisition as Change Director of SHG at TUI . As a non Exec Director of an Independent specialist tour operator over the past 8 years he gained an insight into the impact the internet had on travel businesses and solutions required. This led him to co found 'Net Effect' in 2010 which provides online solutions to Independent Travel Agents, building software solutions to automate difficult and time consuming processes that enable travel agent businesses to effectively compete in the market and creates a seamless distribution channel for Independent Tour Operators.

Mike Russell gained a first class honours degree in engineering from Lancaster University. He then qualified as a chartered accountant and moved on to Corporate Finance and then on to a strategic role at United Co-op, now part of the Co-operative Group. This gave him his first taste of travel where he was responsible for commercial, marketing, finance and acquisitions. Mike then launched Holiday Experts in 2005, which was acquired by the Vertical Group in 2009 and remained as Managing Director before taking on the role CEO , Vertical Systems, early in 2011. Mikes’ role as CEO, Vertical Systems, has taken him back to his technology roots as he takes a hands-on approach to the business. His in-depth knowledge of the travel industry, strategic business development and technology is a unique blend which makes him ideally placed to drive the development and growth of one of the most well-known brands in the UK travel industry.

Rob Stross is a Director at Directflights.com. Rob was previously MD of TNT Magazine and moved into the online meta search space 4 years ago, firstly at Global Travel Market and then Directflights.com. Directflights.com is the UK’s fastest growing meta search site having launched at WTM 2010. 2012 sees some exciting developments for Directflights.com including the launch of their app and expansion into overseas markets. Rob heads up the growing team at their west London base and lives in Hampton Court with his wife and 2 children.

Wilko Weber has an extensive background within hospitality and education. He holds a Master in Science in Dynamic Pricing and Yield Management, has worked in executive positions at the Worldhotels and Lorange Institue of Business in Zurich. In addition to being a partner at Swiss Hospitality Solutions, he is also the Director of Business Development at GlobeRes, and lectures at the University of Salzburg Business School and the Swiss Hotel School in Luzern. Wilko is also the author of Dynamic Pricing.