Julie Zoe holds a first class (Hons) degree in Product Design. She is passionate about everything related to psychology and UX. She believes in the power of applying UCD principles to the physical and digital aspects of the world. Working with some of the world’s biggest brands and multidisciplinary teams she has delivered research insights for exploratory programs to usability tests.
Testing and designing for both physical and digital spaces, Her expertise involves a wide range of UX and strategic methods. Julie Zoe loves everything from interviewing to trend synthesis. She has particular skills in visual brand language and semiotics, and implements her design skills where possible through data visualisation projects.

Leo Poll is the president of Akendi UK. He holds a M.Sc. in Information Technology and a Ph.D. in 'Visualising Graphical User Interfaces for Blind Users'. He has more than 20 years of experience in user-centred experience design and is the (co-)author of 10 patents on UX topics.

Guy Redwood is one of the early online pioneers. Working in digital for over 20 years, he is the founder SimpleUsability, a leading behavioural research consultancy based in Leeds. Clients include Asda, Aviva, Jet2 Holidays, On the Beach, SuperDry, Debenhams and EE.

Over the last 15 years, his team has evolved a UX research methodology that uses trusted psychology principles with innovative technology to observe the natural behaviour of consumers. He has pioneered the use of eye tracking in mobile and tablet usability testing, along with Emotion Response Analysis in retail.

Jackie’s career has focused on sales and marketing for innovative technology companies.  Having worked across many industries from manufacturing and event management to IT security she brings to the world of travel, wide experience of innovative technology and best practise from many differing industries. Jackie has worked with many well known corporates in the selection and implementation of key technologies to improve their businesses.  Jackie is multi lingual, has a BSc Eng degree in production engineering management and over the years she has worked with customers from all over the world including USA, Japan, China and EMEA.

With over 20 years in marketing and developing websites since 1996, Paul is now one of the UKs leading experts on digital marketing. He oversees award winning agency Sagittarius and often lectures and consults within the industry on digital and marketing related subjects and has a particular interest and skills in the travel and tourism sectors. Working with many of the worlds leading travel brands and having also been a director of a tour operator for several years his sector knowledge is formidable.

Paul consults nationally and internationally, helping brands improve acquisition and retention through personalisation, segmentation and digital transformation. 

https://twitter.com/paulrstephen

Christopher (Chris) Nash, co-author of the book Connect – How to Use Data and Experience Marketing to Create Lifetime Customers, is a curiosity-driven analog and digital marketer who frequently hangs out at the corner of business and technology. Over the course of his business career, he has advised numerous brands on digital marketing adoption challenges, co-founded a marketing automation company, grown a successful independent consulting business, and traversed the international business arena. In his current role as senior business optimization consultant at Sitecore, Chris advises customers on strategies and tactics for creating connected customer experiences that produce positive business outcomes.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrisnash

26 years in the travel industry, specializing in French Ski programs. Has been developing ski brands for 14 years as Managing Director of businesses with heavy bias towards internet growth. 14 years of developing the ski-short breaks market, initially creating and building the easyJet4ski.com business, now running the UK largest specialist short break ski tour operator.

https://twitter.com/ski_weekends

Sathya is a senior technologist experienced in building products that enable businesses to scale. Sathya joined onefinestay after spending 11 years at Google in both the US and the UK in a variety of roles on multiple Google Products, including YouTube, Google Play and Maps. Prior to Google, Sathya was a Network Engineer at Netscaler, which was eventually bought by Citrix Systems. Sathya started her career as software engineer at Ericsson.

As VP of Technology at onefinestay, Sathya’s key responsibilities include developing the company’s technical platform that supports the complex operations surrounding both the guest and host experiences.

Antoine joined Hillgate Travel in 2014 to spearhead the technology and systems development functions. Antoine has enjoyed a varied global career in IT spanning software engineering, sales, marketing, product development and operations for a number of companies including Logica, Oracle and DELL.

Antoine is an inveterate traveller and has been lucky enough to work and live in a number of different countries; as a result he has a real passion for languages and is currently learning his 5th.

When Antoine is not trying to challenge the status quo in travel technology, he likes to read extensively about the transformative power of technology for good.

Riaan van Schoor is a co-founder of Agentivity, a web based tool that helps travel agents globally build better agencies by harnessing their agency data to drive decision making. Today the business operates globally, empowering a wide range of travel agents to truly understand their businesses.
He is very passionate about the travel industry, and is also an avid traveller, spending most of his time with customers all over the globe.
Prior to his current venture Riaan worked for Travelport based out of the UK, who relocated him from his native South Africa in 2001 to manage their e-commerce and developer community relationships in Europe.
Riaan recently relocated to Barcelona in Spain, where he now lives.

Over the past 17 years Simon has worked in various roles technology roles, and is currently Associate Director of Architecture & Engineering of Holiday Extras, a travel technology company where he has worked for the last 10 years. Simon's day-to-day role sees him driving the technology strategy for the Holiday Extras business. This position, in recent years, has involved moving into new areas such as AWS Cloud, Node.js, Web Applications and API Architecture and Development as well as championing Lean, Agile and Kanban methodologies.

Brian has 25 years of experience working in IT within the travel and financial services industries. He is currently responsible for managing the overall technology development for Travel Studio, the flagship reservations system from Open Destinations, which is live in more than 30 countries. Prior to Open Destinations, Brian was part of the senior IT management team at GTA, where he ran the internal development teams, leading and contributing to business-critical programmes, projects and processes.

Greg is the Engineering Chief of Staff at Skyscanner.  His passion is for helping to grow teams that can build amazing products better and faster than they ever imagined possible.  Skyscanner now has a Product Engineering team of around 500 brilliant people (and we’re still recruiting hard) in 7 countries that releases features almost every day to more than 50m users every month.  Before joining Skyscanner Greg was responsible for the delivery of medical product lines at Toshiba Medical and telecom network monitoring systems at Agilent.  Greg started his career as a developer and worked his way through a variety of engineering and product roles in three startups and three giant multi-nationals.

Lee has been covering the UK travel sector in various roles with the trade media for over a decade. He now heads up news output for leading title Travel Weekly and also edits its digital travel title Travolution that has been reporting on the online sector for 10 years this year. At TTE Travolution will unveil its annual Innovation Report analysing technology investment in the UK travel sector in 2015 and forecasting 2016.

Ross Tuffee is Managing Director of award winning mobile software development company DOGFI.SH Mobile Ltd.

Co-founded in 2009 by Ross Tuffee and Paul Burrowes, DOGFI.SH has quickly become the leader in its field, delivering technical solutions to a number of high profile clients in the travel sector.  Their groundbreaking company has delivered enterprise grade mobile solutions for major global travel brands such as TUI Travel (eg, Thomson, First Choice, Crystal Ski, LeBoat & Exodus Travels), enabling them to increase their customer reach and drive richer customer engagement.

Ross said: “Over the past five years, mobile has exploded onto the scene with hundreds of different handsets and millions of mobile applications.  Smartphone & tablet usage has become mainstream and savvy businesses are now investing in mobilising their consumer and employee offerings.”

In tandem with this expansion of the mobile market, DOGFI.SH has quickly grown from a small start-up to a large team of “mobile passionate” professionals, delivering mobile strategy and enterprise mobile solutions to leading brands across a number of sectors including leisure (Merlin Entertainments and English Heritage), retail (Value Retail, IKEA) and utilities (Network Rail, SSE and SGN).

Ross’s interest in the travel sector stems from earlier in his career when he was part of the Management Team at First Choice Holidays as it emerged from what was Owners Abroad.  He also brings to the table 5 years experience as a Management Consultant with Ernst & Young, as well as 12 years in business change and IT roles for Diageo. His in-depth knowledge of how technology can make a difference to both consumers and employees serves him well as CEO of DOGFI.SH, where he works with CIOs and business leadership teams to develop mobile strategies and solutions that deliver key business outcomes. 

Ross said: “We don’t just design and build apps….  We build strong, long lasting relationships with our clients.  In mobile development, it is not the case that ‘one size fits all’, we ensure we match our innovative solutions with clients’ specific needs.  Our aim is to help our clients deliver compelling digital experiences to their customers that support specific business goals.”

As well as delivering bespoke mobile services to large enterprises, DOGFI.SH has also brought several mobile products to market that are designed to deliver “off the shelf” mobile capability to smaller organisations at a lower cost. 

Neil is a renowned blogger, writer, trainer and a digital and media consultant specialising in applying strategic understanding of social and emerging media technologies to help businesses innovate and optimise their effectiveness within the new, networked communications environment.
He is a regular keynote speaker across Europe on organisational agility, content strategy, emerging media, and digital strategy, a contributor to Econsultancy, Marketing Week, and Mediatel amongst others, and was recently named by BIMA (British Interactive Media Association) as one of the most influential people in the UK digital industry.
Neil curates the quarterly series of Firestarters thought leadership events on behalf of Google UK, and is a keynote speaker on the Google Squared programme. He has worked with market-leading global businesses including Warner Bros, The Daily Telegraph, Samsung, YouTube, Marks And Spencer and the NSPCC, and is an associate of The Futures Agency, a collaboration of some of the world's leading media thinkers and futurists.
He has over 20 years media owner experience and was latterly the Director of Marketing and Strategy for IPC Media, the largest consumer publisher in the UK and publisher of multimedia brands including Wallpaper, Marie Claire and the NME. In this capacity he ran strategy, planning and consumer insight functions and was at the centre of defining and implementing the digital strategy for one of the largest media owners in the UK. For people who like shiny things, he’s won more industry awards than just about anyone in UK media, with five awards to his name including a Campaign Award, two Media Week Awards and an Association of Online Publishers award.

Dr Dave Chaffey is CEO and co-founder of Smart Insights (www.smartinsights.com). He has advised companies on multichannel marketing strategy through training workshops and consulting, and delivered to large international organisations like Tui, Thomas Cook, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft.

Dave is author of 5 bestselling books on Ecommerce. He has been recognised as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide, who have shaped the future of Marketing by the Chartered Institute of Marketing. In 2015 he was rated by BrandRepublic.com as the top UK influencer on social media for Marketing and Advertising.

Marco Ryan was the Chief Digital Officer for Thomas Cook Group plc, accountable for all Digital Revenues (c£3.5bn), Strategy, Product Development and Innovation. Before this, he was Thomas Cook’s Omni-channel Managing Director in DACH. Prior to that he was Accenture’s Partner for their Digital business in Asia.

In 2014 Forbes Magazine rated him one of the Top 10 most influential in Digital Marketing. He is an expert on Digital transformation – his book on this is to be published in March - a guest lecturer to several Business schools in UK and Asia and a regular speaker at conferences and seminars. He has survived 2 revolutions, two air-crashes and far too many long haul flights to be proud of. He flies vintage Biplanes and is an accomplished travel photographer that regularly exhibits.

David joined Hotels.com as a Development Manager and has worked in various areas from mobile apps to big data solutions.

David has had an interest in technology from a very early age and studied Computer Science and Cybernetics at the University of Reading. 

Prior to joining Hotels.com, David worked at a number of start-up technology companies.  Most recently David was CTO of a start-up in in the fin tech space which powered trade finance for Fortune 250 companies and their suppliers.

Francesco de Marchis is responsible for LCTG IT division since March 2015. Here, he is driving an innovative Technology and Product Roadmap to enhance LCTG’s role in the Travel and Hospitality arena. Previously, he had been the CIO of Play.com building a new Digital e-commerce offering in the media business while expanding the 3^rd Parties Offering bringing Play.com to become the 3^rd Marketplace in UK. Prior to Play.com, he had been CIO/CTO for Travel Companies like Orbitz World Wide, Travelport and Jac Travel where he accomplished major complex Platform Implementation and Migrations. Before coming to the UK, he worked for 12 years in the USA playing a key role in the E-Commerce market.  As VP of Product Development for ATG, he led the implementation of the E-commerce Suite which was awarded #1 in Gartner Magic Quadrant and best product of the year 2004-2006. Francesco has a degree in Electrical Engineers and Computer Science from University of Rome. He lives in North London with his wife and 2 sons.

Mr. Dag Skage has been Chief Information Officer at Norwegian since October 2014. Before that he was Executive Director within Ernst Young’s IT advisory unit. He has also previous consulting and management experience, including BearingPoint and Andersen Business Consulting. Mr. Skage has extensive experience in the consulting industry, particularly IT management, portfolio management, sourcing and change management. He holds an Master of Science in Business from the Norwegian Business School with additional education in IT Management and Project Management.

A multi linguist, Charlotte’s career has spanned sales, marketing and event management for eighteen years. She has worked across several industries, including international media, oil and petrochemicals, before moving to the travel sector, where she launched the online travel brand Travolution for Reed Business Information, and later worked as new business director at Conrad Advertising, a full service advertising agency with a sole focus on travel clients.

Charlotte joined DataArt London in late 2012 as a Vice President of Travel & Hospitality for Europe, in charge of sales for the travel practice. She has since secured key clients in UK and organized multiple events, bringing the travel and hospitality community together while strengthening the DataArt brand in the vertical. Having worked with a number of brand name clients, including Expedia, lastminute.com, Thomas Cook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, enables Charlotte to engage with senior industry figures and stay at the forefront of developments across the sector. She is a speaker at industry events and a passionate proponent of innovative travel technologies.@lottmus

Andy is bd4travel’s CEO and co-Founder. He oversees business development and the overall growth strategy. Before founding bd4travel, Andy was the CEO at leading German leisure specialist TravelTainment, which he joined after 10 years at Amadeus. Prior to that, Andy held positions at several international businesses such as British Airways, Deloitte Consulting, and Virgin Atlantic. If Andy hadn’t opted for a business career, he’d probably still be training on the soccer field or coaching one of the UK’s up and coming teams.

As Managing Director for the UK & Ireland, Hallerberg leads Sabre’s travel marketplace business in the UK and Ireland, which is the largest for Sabre in the region.  He is tasked with growing the company’s customer base, and maintaining successful and trusted relationships with Sabre’s existing travel management company clients, technology partners, as well as leisure and generalist travel agencies in the UK and Ireland. 

Julia became Managing Director of Advantage Travel Centres in July 2013 with responsibility for running the business on a day-to-day basis as well as developing the strategy and vision for the company. Following a review of the business, in 2014 Julia launched Vision 2020 – a strategic plan which outlines the business’ key goals for the next five years; redefining the business culture to one of momentum, enthusiasm, high performance and energy; repositioning the business to The Advantage Travel Partnership providing greater clarity of its business-to-business ethos and membership value; restructuring of marketing and business development as core services to the entire group as well as the introduction of a new governance framework for the company.

After studying travel and tourism at college she started her travel career with a brief four months working overseas before joining WH Smith Travel for four years, until they were acquired by AT Mays, and latterly absorbed by Thomas Cook.  Julia then held roles with Balkan Holidays and The Best Travel Group before joining Advantage. Having worked her way up to her current position, Julia has been at Advantage for 20 years.  Julia has been an ITT board director since 2011, and in 2012 she was inducted into the Women's 1st Top 100 Club for Travel and Hospitality. 

Lee has been covering the UK travel sector in various roles with the trade media for over a decade. He now heads up news output for leading title Travel Weekly and also edits its digital travel title Travolution that has been reporting on the online sector for 10 years this year. At TTE Travolution will unveil its annual Innovation Report analysing technology investment in the UK travel sector in 2015 and forecasting 2016.

With over 15 years of experience in design, Kevin has been responsible for the successful delivery of projects in the travel, leisure and retail sectors. In his role at 20.20 Ltd, Kevin was influential in the award-winning Thomson Holiday Design Store, which transformed the traditional travel retail experience into a collaborative relationship between travel experts and high-street holiday shoppers. Kevin is now spearheading growth and opportunity for 20.20 in the wider travel market. 

Roberto Da Re is the founder and CEO of travel technology specialist Dolphin Dynamics. Roberto has guided the development of Dolphin from start-up to its position today as a trusted sales and booking management platform trusted by hundreds of travel companies in 26 countries.

Prior to forming the company he held commercial roles with SABRE, both in his native Italy and at the organisation’s headquarters in Texas. Celebrating Dolphin Dynamics’ 21^st birthday this year, today Roberto leads an experienced team of travel and technology specialists at its London headquarters.

Lee has been covering the UK travel sector in various roles with the trade media for over a decade. He now heads up news output for leading title Travel Weekly and also edits its digital travel title Travolution that has been reporting on the online sector for 10 years this year. At TTE Travolution will unveil its annual Innovation Report analysing technology investment in the UK travel sector in 2015 and forecasting 2016.

Ian has particular expertise in the travel, shipping, retail and healthcare sectors. Before forming ICE ICT, Ian built up a number of very happy clients as Principal Consultant and Director of Iris UK, supporting SMEs predominantly in travel, law, and development. Prior to setting up Iris UK, Ian led projects for Maersk Group, including the major network integration of all data centres and UK offices (25 sites). Earlier in his career, Ian was UK IT Manager at Hurtigruten, leading infrastructure and development projects.

Nick joined Intent Media from Adobe, where he had been European managing director for its media optimisation, audience management and social marketing business. Previously, he served as vice-president and European managing director for Efficient Frontier where he scaled the business up to its acquisition by Adobe.

Kevin May is a senior editor and one of the co-founders at Tnooz. He was previously editor of UK-based magazine Travolution and web editor of Media Week UK from 2003 to 2005.

He has worked in regional newspapers (Essex Enquirer) and started his career in journalism at the Police Gazette at New Scotland Yard in London. He has a degree in criminology, a postgraduate diploma in magazine journalism and will be publishing his first book - a biography about electronic band, Depeche Mode - soon.

As COO at Mozio, Emre helps connect travel brands and their customers with the best local options for ground transportation. He is focused on enabling leading travel brands to use Mozio's technology to increase both customer engagement and profits while avoiding costly mistakes seen in typical approaches to ground transportation. 

Prior to joining Mozio, he worked as a consultant to over a dozen leading global technology companies to identify and achieve over a hundred million dollars in profit and revenue improvements by optimizing commercial activities. 

Emre earned dual degrees in Applied Mathematics and Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Stephen leads the client services team and is responsible for delivering innovation, excellence, value and growth to all clients. He’s spent 18 years as a marketing professional, including a stint at MTV and 14 years with Ogilvy Group. Stephen has expertise across disciplines including digital, retail, CRM and traditional advertising, experiential and branding.

Stephen’s also sat on a number of boards, run departments of 60+ people and led integrated business for HSBC, Schroders, Philips, Mondelez, Castrol, Qualcomm, Kodak, GSK, BSkyB and Jack Daniel’s. Outside of work he indulges his love of writing & recording music, travel and sport.

Tal Pelta, a senior member of the Dropbox strategic account team, works with UK Travel & Hospitality companies to improve collaboration and get work done faster, easier and more securely.

With over 15 years experience in the software industry, Tal understands the challenges facing IT departments such as shadow IT, security, and BYOD. As enterprise needs change with so much work created outside enterprise walls and across so many devices, Tal works with CIOs, CISOs and CTOs on strategies for securing their information, increasing innovation, and improving the customer journey. He also helps companies understand the business value of collaboration and it’s place in the digital workplace and will speak on these topics at Travel Technology Europe.

Working with a range of clients over his career, from highly regulated industries such as banking and pharma to travel, hospitality and other industry sectors, Tal also successfully built channel partnerships at companies such as EMC and eCopy.

Joakim Everstin is a technology evangelist and head of innovation for Sabre’s Travel Network division.  In his role, Joakim is responsible for identifying emerging trends and technologies in travel, and overseeing the development of these into value-add products for Sabre’s customers.  He has been a frequent keynote speaker and panellist around innovation in travel, mobile technology and wearable devices at some of the world’s major technology and travel events, such as TTE,WTM, ITB, IFTM, Russia Internet Forum and Arabian Travel Market. 

Prior to joining Sabre, Joakim managed a successful company in Sweden, which provided Multi Variate Testing (MVT) and web analytics to help e-commerce companies optimise their e-commerce funnels.  Before this, Joakim held a key position within Scandinavian Airlines’ e-commerce team.

Jackie’s career has focused on sales and marketing for innovative technology companies.  Having worked across many industries from manufacturing and event management to IT security she brings to the world of travel, wide experience of innovative technology and best practise from many differing industries. Jackie has worked with many well known corporates in the selection and implementation of key technologies to improve their businesses.  Jackie is multi lingual, has a BSc Eng degree in production engineering management and over the years she has worked with customers from all over the world including USA, Japan, China and EMEA.

Steve has the unusual distinction of having extensive experience within both the corporate and entrepreneurial environments.

Steve now describes his work as “Portfolio” management spending time fulfilling consultancy and Non Executive director roles, across a range of travel and non-travel brands, including his role as Chairman of Teletext Holidays.

Steve also continues hold shareholdings and play an active entrepreneurial role in business he has helped found, such as Holiday Taxis, Rock Insurance, Internet Traveller, Luggage Mule and CWT Digital.

However Steve has built his present entrepreneurial business activities by pulling on 15 years of experience leading traditional package tour operators. Steve’s corporate career involved high profile directorships in some of the UK’s largest tour operating groups spanning financial controller of International Leisure Group to Deputy Chief Operating Officer of MYTravel Plc  and included directorship over finance, yield management, marketing, contracting, overseas operations, sales and retail operations.

Over the course of his career, Peter has had many dealings with Hoteliers, Corporate Travel & Procurement Managers, Travel Agents, Travel Suppliers, Tour Operators and Destination Management Organisations worldwide. Today he is seen by many as a notable specialist and indeed a Guru in the world of Global Distribution Systems and the Internet, and the very important part that modern ICT technologies are playing in the world of global communications and electronic distribution. He is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences and a popular chair/moderator at various travel related conferences, forums and events both in Europe and the United States. He has also been interviewed on international television and radio on a number of occasions and is an avid futurist with a particular interest in M-commerce and emerging biometric technologies.

Ian setup Travel Retail Associates to bring strategies and practices from the retail sector to the travel sector.

He has worked for the last 15 years in travel and has consulted in North America, the EC, Russia, and Asia on technology strategy and implementation.

Kevin May is a senior editor and one of the co-founders at Tnooz. He was previously editor of UK-based magazine Travolution and web editor of Media Week UK from 2003 to 2005.

He has worked in regional newspapers (Essex Enquirer) and started his career in journalism at the Police Gazette at New Scotland Yard in London. He has a degree in criminology, a postgraduate diploma in magazine journalism and will be publishing his first book - a biography about electronic band, Depeche Mode - soon.

Andreas Hansson is the co-founder and CEO of Finnish technology and services company Cabforce, which was acquired by CarTrawler in April 2015. Cabforce was founded in 2009, has grown to become the leading online provider of taxi and private transfer booking solutions, and represents a significant part of CarTrawler’s growing ground transportation offering. As Cabforce CEO, Andreas is responsible for the continued growth and success of the company in the travel tech industry.

Prior to founding Cabforce, Andreas worked in the mobile telecom industry for more than 15 years. He has extensive experience in concept innovation and definition, consumer insight, change management and management consultancy. Andreas holds an M.Sc. Eng. in Computer Science and Industrial Management from Helsinki University of Technology.

Jason started at Travelport in 2009, as Director of Commerce Portfolio, responsible for all of Travelport’s Point of Sale (PoS) applications including desktop applications, e-commerce services and corporate solutions. Key initiatives included Universal Desktop and Universal API solutions, among others. In December 2010, Jason was promoted to lead and expand Travelport’s Product Innovation Unit while maintaining overall responsibility for the PoS portfolio. Most recently, Jason has been working on a new process for innovation and incubation to ensure the ViewTrip NG approach of including validated learnings into solutions is accomplished early and that Travelport have a growth and value hypothesis on every solution we build. In addition, Jason is leading global marketing and product planning, evangelising our solutions externally with agile and lean thinking internally. 

20 years’ experience in the IT industry has taken Jason to the USA, where he worked for .Com boom survivor Powerway Inc., which then served as a catalyst into a number of blue chip organisations such as Sony and Barclays Bank, as well as Microsoft. With significant CRM experience, including what is now Siebel’s Janna Systems, it was at Microsoft as spokesperson for Dynamics CRM while presenting to the UK’s Institute of Directors with Bill Gates that gave Jason the speaker circuit appetite. Since that time, he has presented at Technology for Marketing, Institute of Sales & Marketing Management seminars, Microsoft’s EMEA and USA Convergence and Worldwide Partner Conferences.

Andy is bd4travel’s CEO and co-Founder. He oversees business development and the overall growth strategy. Before founding bd4travel, Andy was the CEO at leading German leisure specialist TravelTainment, which he joined after 10 years at Amadeus. Prior to that, Andy held positions at several international businesses such as British Airways, Deloitte Consulting, and Virgin Atlantic. If Andy hadn’t opted for a business career, he’d probably still be training on the soccer field or coaching one of the UK’s up and coming teams.

Andy is bd4travel’s CEO and co-Founder. He oversees business development and the overall growth strategy. Before founding bd4travel, Andy was the CEO at leading German leisure specialist TravelTainment, which he joined after 10 years at Amadeus. Prior to that, Andy held positions at several international businesses such as British Airways, Deloitte Consulting, and Virgin Atlantic. If Andy hadn’t opted for a business career, he’d probably still be training on the soccer field or coaching one of the UK’s up and coming teams.

Lennert de Jong has been the commercial director for citizenM since its inception in 2006 and leads the company's digital marketing, demand management and sales strategy.

Guilain Denisselle is Editor at TendanceHotellerie.fr, a webzine dedicated to the French speaking hospitality community, with a strong emphasis on hotel distribution, OTA's, social media, marketing and technology. Mr. Denisselle is an independent consultant since June 2001, with customers in Europe, Middle East, Africa and North America. He is also Executive Advisor & European Coordinator of Hospitality Technology Next Generation (HTNG), a trade association that facilitates development of next generation customer-centric technologies to better meet the needs of the global hotel community. Mr. Denisselle has organized, chaired and spoken about hospitality and travel at numerous conferences in France and in the UK. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, he worked in hotel and resort operations as well as PMS and CRS companies. Mr. Denisselle key topics include hotel and tourism reservation & distribution technologies, PMS, OTAs, dematerialization, business travel and travel related VAT.

Over the course of his career, Peter has had many dealings with Hoteliers, Corporate Travel & Procurement Managers, Travel Agents, Travel Suppliers, Tour Operators and Destination Management Organisations worldwide. Today he is seen by many as a notable specialist and indeed a Guru in the world of Global Distribution Systems and the Internet, and the very important part that modern ICT technologies are playing in the world of global communications and electronic distribution. He is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences and a popular chair/moderator at various travel related conferences, forums and events both in Europe and the United States. He has also been interviewed on international television and radio on a number of occasions and is an avid futurist with a particular interest in M-commerce and emerging biometric technologies.

Chris Ulph leads global marketing communication for Sabre's Hospitality Solutions division.  He is responsible for identifying emerging trends and analysing the competitive landscape in the hotel space, as well as managing Sabre Hospitality Solutions’ global brand presence.  As a marketer-come-economist, Chris has a particular interest in guest purchase economics and technologies that influence the buying path.

Prior to joining Sabre, Chris was head of marketing for one of Sabre's hospitality partners in Spain and Switzerland, which worked with independent and boutique hotels to help them grow their revenue and distribution capabilities.  Currently studying for an MBA, Chris earned his first Master’s degree in marketing from the University of Hertfordshire where he also gained his Bachelor's degree in Business Economics.

John has spent the past 15 years of his career within the hospitality sector. Selling primarily SaaS platforms for the later part of his career. John has joined TravelTripper form one of Europes best known booking engine technology providers Bookassist, where John was Head of Sales for over 3 years. During this time John opened several new markets for Bookassist including the UK and UAE regions, while pitching to some of the largest hotel groups in Europe and the UAE.

After graduating with a BA in Business, John joined a private investment company and opened several hostels, guest houses, and small hotels in Dublin. Since then John has been part of several startups in the past 18 years, including two of his own companies within the hospitality sector which have since been bought and continue trading.

John is a calculated risk-taker with great tech and marketing knowledge bringing many years of sales experience and know how, and has been tasked with the setup and introduction of Travel Tripper to the UK and European markets. In his personal time john has been a competitive windsurfer for many years, and loves nothing more than going windsurfing with his daughter during the summer months and racing the Irish triathlon circuit during the off season and winter months.

Lindy Veitenheimer is the Chief Sales Officer for iRiS Software Systems Ltd, a leading hospitality technology company, specialising in delivering additional sources of ROI and unrivalled guest experiences through mobile applications. Lindy is responsible for creating faster responses to global market transitions, increasing customer relevance, redefining ROI and overall sales strategy. Before joining iRiS, Lindy directed the development of innovative “routes to market” solutions for numerous large enterprises around the world. With over 15 years’ experience in the international hospitality sector, Lindy provides perspective and understanding to deliver and exceed customer expectations.

Passion, accuracy and collaboration are the words that best describe her, a person who always thinks global and is obsessed for elevating the collective talent to the next level, by focusing on the human vibration and knowledge of each professional she works with: colleagues, top management, customers, partners, providers, etc…

Holding a 4 year-degree in Business & Tourism Administration, a Commercial & Marketing Management Master Degree by ESADE Business School & a certification on Executive Leadership Education by IESE, she confesses that her most valuable expertise comes from the field.

Over the last 20+ years she has worked for a variety of travel industry players like British Airways, American Airlines, Amadeus IT Group, Disney Destinations LLC and NH Hotel Group, where she is currently committed in balancing strategic plans definition and team engagement to make things happen through people.

Niels is in charge of Hospitality PreSales for Infor in the EMEA region, a department which supports the sales teams with in depth and technical product knowledge during the sales process.

Niels was working for EasyRMS when it was acquired by Infor in 2012. He founded the Infor EzPLUS department to enable delivery of a complete Revenue Management Consulting package in addition to the EzRMS system. Niels has worked in the Hospitality industry for the last 20 years and has specialized in Revenue Management over the last 15 years.

Michael Heyward is the principal of the consulting business, Heyward Hospitality Solutions delivering business process improvement and profit optimisation for the hospitality industry. A Hospitality Lecturer at Glion Institute of Higher Education (London) and Chairman of the HOSPA Revenue Management Committee.

Michael has over 25 years of experience in the Hospitality Industry, in revenue management, hotel operations and corporate roles. This includes independent hotels, IHG and Accor, from 3 to 5 star across Europe, Asia and the Pacific. With a proven track record for delivering market out performance in revenue and developing teams of highly skilled, diverse, competitive people.

Phil is responsible for the overall product development of Open Destinations’ flagship reservations system, Travel Studio, which is live in more than 30 countries. Phil has over 25 years of information systems management experience within the travel and leisure sector, covering implementation of operational, marketing and BI systems, in environments that range from large customer contact centres to remote operational offices and African lodges. This experience includes 13 years with the Abercrombie & Kent group of companies, where he was Chief Information Officer (CIO), responsible for a global network of inbound and outbound travel companies.

Maria Whiteman is the Commercial Director for Amadeus UK & Ireland. She joined Amadeus in 2013 with the aim of developing the commercial strategy in the UK and Ireland, with a focus on expanding the range of consulting and solutions services provided, ensuring travel sellers have the smarter technology they need to most effectively grow their businesses.

Maria has 25 years of experience in the travel industry. Prior to joining Amadeus, she was the CEO at Directline Holidays. She has previously worked for tour operators Travel 2 Travel 4 and Hayes & Jarvis. 

Paul Richer is Senior Partner of Genesys, a management consultancy that has built a worldwide reputation for its knowledge and experience of the application of e-commerce and online distribution technologies to the travel industry.   Clients include many of the best known names in travel.

Paul has co-authored several reports examining the impact of technology on the distribution of travel, including “Distribution Technology in the Travel Industry” originally published by Financial Times Retail and “Marketing Destinations Online – Strategies for the Information Age” published by the World Tourism Organisation. 

He holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and is a member of the Institute of Travel & Tourism and the Chartered Institute of Marketing.   Paul is married with three children.   His leisure interests include gliding and power flying.

More information at http://www.genesys.net

Daniel Pearce has been managing director and owner of TTG Media Limited since 2013, following a 20-year career in newspapers and magazines. The new company continues to connect buyers and sellers of travel across the UK trade and beyond, with a business stretching from website ttgmedia.com and quarterly magazine ttgluxury to an innovative portfolio of events including the TTG Travel Awards, the TTG On Tour series of roadshows, the expanding TTG LGBT network and a string of events in luxury travel. 

In 2016 the business has a new focus on its international network of TTG partners, which stretch from TTG Nordic in Copenhagen to TTG Asia in Singapore. 

More than 60 years since it was first published in 1953, the business continues to be underpinned by the Travel Trade Gazette, the magazine that continues to inform, inspire and champion the UK travel industry every week.

Kevin Ashbridge is a 17-year travel industry veteran with wide experience in both the retail and wholesale sectors. From writing and producing award winning holiday teleshopping programming at Sky, to developing online content and translation strategies and processes, Kevin is responsible for many technology and commercial innovations. A trained scientist, Kevin consistently brings a fresh approach and a different point of view to the traditional industry challenges and joined SDL to, in his words, “be part of the new success story” delivered through SDL’s Customer Experience Cloud.

Andy Boyce has worked in the travel industry for over 20 years and is founder and Managing Director of Travology Limited.

Andy started his travel career as an overseas representative and quickly worked his way up to hold senior roles within the Thomas Cook group.

Andy implemented Thomas Cook’s first overseas computerised booking and reservations system in over 120 resorts worldwide before going on to successfully manage several large scale IT projects using all of his unique skills and knowledge of business processes and IT.

In 2002, believing that there was a gap in the market for expertise that understood the travel business and travel technology, Andy formed Travology Limited to help travel companies find and implement travel technology solutions.

Since its formation, Andy and Travology have been instrumental in successfully helping nearly 100 travel businesses to procure and implement numerous travel technology solutions, including reservations and selling systems, dynamic packaging solutions, content management system, CRM, finance and resort/destination management systems.

In addition, Andy Boyce and Travology have been responsible for the successful development of many of the leading travel websites and e-commerce solutions for travel companies of all sizes in various markets and conducted numerous IT due diligence projects for many of the most high profile mergers and acquisitions within the travel industry.

With over 20 years in marketing and developing websites since 1996, Paul is now one of the UKs leading experts on digital marketing. He oversees award winning agency Sagittarius and often lectures and consults within the industry on digital and marketing related subjects and has a particular interest and skills in the travel and tourism sectors. Working with many of the worlds leading travel brands and having also been a director of a tour operator for several years his sector knowledge is formidable.

Paul consults nationally and internationally, helping brands improve acquisition and retention through personalisation, segmentation and digital transformation. 

https://twitter.com/paulrstephen

Christopher (Chris) Nash, co-author of the book Connect – How to Use Data and Experience Marketing to Create Lifetime Customers, is a curiosity-driven analog and digital marketer who frequently hangs out at the corner of business and technology. Over the course of his business career, he has advised numerous brands on digital marketing adoption challenges, co-founded a marketing automation company, grown a successful independent consulting business, and traversed the international business arena. In his current role as senior business optimization consultant at Sitecore, Chris advises customers on strategies and tactics for creating connected customer experiences that produce positive business outcomes.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrisnash

Contiki has always been about delivering life-changing travel experiences, and Alexis’ work, rooted in a deep understanding of the global youth consumer, has found new and inventive ways of connecting the brand with a dynamic millennial audience.

Whether it is bringing to life Contiki’s #NOREGRETS repositioning through creative content campaigns, the development of award winning mobile apps, or building a world class digital platform based on personalisation, Alexis’ work focuses dually on engagement and driving real commercial success. Pioneering programs like the RoadTrip, now in its 5^th year, have only been made possible by integrating social into the heart of a global team spread across 6 continents.

Iain is the founder of Skipedia Travel Marketing and Natives.co.uk. He has been working in the travel industry since 1988.

Heading up Contiki’s global Engagement & Amplification team, Will drives global reach and engagement across multiple channels – through social media, technological innovation, trend analysis, media relations, influencer marketing, SEO & creative content. As a consumer focused strategist, he is an expert on the millennial traveller, leveraging developing behaviours to create innovative approaches to engage with this lucrative demographic. 

He is responsible for the development of Contiki’s highly successful influencer program, manages the sustainability focused Contiki Cares program, and drives the brand’s social media strategy, which sits at the heart of all business activity. 

Bruce Martin is the Managing Director of Ginger Juice, an award-winning social media agency specialising in travel & hospitality.  Ginger Juice delivers social media strategy, community management, advertising and coaching services.  Clients include World Travel Market, Motel One, VisitEngland & Holiday Taxis – as well as niche tour operators, luxury hotels and online travel agencies.

Bruce is also the co-founder of ‘Travel Gossip’, the UK’s largest and most influential online community for the travel industry, with over 5000 Facebook group members.  Bruce has previously worked in digital marketing, travel agent eLearning, travel recruitment & tour operations. 

Bruce has spoken about social media at many events Arabian Travel Market, Visit USA, Barclays Travel Forum and Elite Travel Conference.”

Lee Grogan is an experienced 'Big Data' analytics and eCommerce consultant with over 17 years in the software industry. At Monetate, Lee works with household travel brands such as Eurostar, Thomas Cook, P&O and Cunard. Helping them to harness the potential of the data they already have and combine it with rich behavioural and contextual insight to create and deliver consistent data driven personalised experiences at every step in the customer journey - building loyalty, increasing revenues and driving profitability. 

Johnathan Foulkes stands at the forefront of the fastest moving technology industry trend: Email Marketing Cloud Services. He’s spent the past years transforming an industry-wide shift to the cloud and has helped position Emailcenter as a leader in the email marketing cloud space.

With a deep tech industry knowledge, Johnathan has championed cloud services to his enterprise customers; his industry knowledge and success have motivated 100's of customers globally to embrace the email marketing cloud. Johnathan is recognised for providing email marketing solutions to reflect an attractive ROI and uplift in engagement to his customers for Emailcenter's enterprise Cloud Services.

Joel has been Managing Director of Travelzoo’s UK business – the largest market for Travelzoo in Europe – since 2009. Since joining the company over six years ago, he has grown the team from 17 to 150 employees, helped Travelzoo win Best Deals Provider at the British Travel Awards – a category voted for by the public – four years running and contributed towards growing the Travelzoo UK member community to over 4 million people.

Regularly called upon by broadcasters including BBC Breakfast to discuss travel trends and forecasts, Joel is an industry expert and frequently appears as keynote speaker at top international travel and digital marketing events.  

Before joining Travelzoo, Joel had a hand in building a dot-com start-up into the world’s then-leading provider of digital travel content, a business that was then bought by the largest travel guidebook brand in the US.

Joel has also had success in the music industry, working in the 1990s with artists including INXS, Simple Minds and Depeche Mode, who were signed to his first record label. This collaborative venture with the main man from Groove Armada won Music Week's Emerging Label of the Year award.

A thrill-seeking holidaymaker, Joel has scuba dived over 100 times in some of the most remote areas of the Banda Sea and also completed the highest bungee jump in the world – he has no desire to repeat the experience!

Paul Richer is Senior Partner of Genesys, a management consultancy that has built a worldwide reputation for its knowledge and experience of the application of e-commerce and online distribution technologies to the travel industry.   Clients include many of the best known names in travel.

Paul has co-authored several reports examining the impact of technology on the distribution of travel, including “Distribution Technology in the Travel Industry” originally published by Financial Times Retail and “Marketing Destinations Online – Strategies for the Information Age” published by the World Tourism Organisation. 

He holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and is a member of the Institute of Travel & Tourism and the Chartered Institute of Marketing.   Paul is married with three children.   His leisure interests include gliding and power flying.

More information at http://www.genesys.net

Manu Raivio is the Chief Marketing Officer at Frosmo, spreading the word about the success of Frosmo’s in­browser website development technology. Having spent the last 5 years working globally at Google as a Publisher Product Specialist (OR “Eng­Business hostage negotiator”) he has a knack for addressing complex business problems through tech expertise. To complement the stage time he’s getting at work as a public speaker, in the evenings Manu can be found on the stand­up comedy circuit.

Hugo Burge is the Chief Executive Officer at Momondo Group, the parent company of pioneering global travel search brands, Cheapflights and Momondo.  Momondo Group operates platforms in over 30 markets across the world, employing nearly 300 people, shaping and inspiring travel search.

Hugo has supported significant growth and change within the business since joining and investing in March 2000 – all of which was achieved out of profitable cashflow. In 2003, he successfully oversaw the introduction of the Cheapflights brand to the massive US travel market – now its largest area of operation. In 2011, Hugo led the acquisition of Copenhagen-based meta-technology search specialist, Momondo, and the subsequent establishment of Momondo Group. His positive impact both at Momondo Group and within the wider industry has been recognised by his peers, with Hugo voted Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the Travel Industry Hall of Fame in 2008.

The part sale of the group, for $130 million, to Boston-based Great Hill Partners in 2014 gave Momondo Group a new lead investor and focus. This has allowed Hugo to channel the business’s energies on building products people love, and driving rapid global growth. As a result, the company now supports 1 million users per day using the company’s award winning products.

Hugo’s passions for travel, design and entrepreneurship are equally evident in his work outside of Momondo Group:

• As co-founder of private venture fund HOWZAT Partners with David Soskin, he has invested in a number of promising early-stage digital businesses, including trivago (a rare European Unicorn), Barnebys, SpotAHome, Lodgify, mozio and Appear Here.
• Hugo holds a degree in Geography from the University of Cambridge, and enjoys using his free time to indulge his own travel interests, from observing mountain gorillas in Kahuzi Biega National Park, in Zaire, to seeing the lemurs of Madagascar.
• He also fosters a passion for design and is a vocal advocate of the values and legacies of the Arts & Crafts movement. Hugo has also co-lead a project to restore Marchmont House (Sir Robert Lorimer), in the Scottish Borders, from a nursing home into a luxury but homely venue for corporate activities and private lets.

Lee Jackson has been with WEX Europe business since its inception in the UK almost 3 years ago and currently manages business development in travel in Europe. Previously Lee worked in senior commercial and business development roles primarily in the Payments and Travel Industry.

His 20 years’ experience in the travel sector spanning both Retail and Corporate Travel, Tour operations and the Airline business included full P&L accountability in his time with American Express and the development of commercial partnerships with agents at British Midland.

Lee moved into the payments arena through an eight year spell in the electronic money sector with PayPoint plc. Through his experience of working with new and established payment institutions Lee has a 360 degree view of the payment sector and solid experience in the integration of payment solutions to meet wider business strategy.

Dave Lukas has been a part of Grasp since 2005 – first as an investor in Grasp and then in the VP/CSO role.  In addition to being an experienced entrepreneur, Dave is also the author of the best-selling book, “The Ten Year Career, The Fast Track Guide to Retiring Young, Wealthy, and Fulfilled.”  He is the architect of Grasp’s global sales and go-to market strategies and is responsible for the strategic growth of Grasp. Under his guidance Grasp has realized nine consecutive record setting years of growth; over 60% growth annually and was recognized to the INC 5000 list of Fastest Growing Companies in 2015. 

As a compelling public speaker, Mr. Lukas has spoken extensively in front of a wide array of organizations, with an emphasis on teaching individuals the strategies to reach their true potential and deliver exponential results.  He has been featured on radio, TV, and in many top trade publications, including Forbes Online.

Dave received his Bachelor of Arts in Business Management, Finance and Economics from Baldwin-Wallace University, and lives with his wife and daughter in Columbus, Ohio.

Passionate about e-commerce, Angie has over 16 years’ experience in digital sales and strategy, gained in the Travel and Media arenas.  As Head of Connectivity, Angie leads the strategy and team dedicated to delivering dynamic content and associated products for Miki Travel, a leading global wholesale travel provider.  Having held key positions at lastminute.com, Travelocity and AutoTrader, Angie is a keen Agile practitioner, whose entrepreneurial approach believes in driving profitability through data insight and technological efficiencies. She matched to Steve Jobs in a recent personality test, supporting her own work/life goal to challenge status quo and ‘do things differently’ but gladly, she doesn’t fire people as quickly!!

In over four decades of business MIKI Travel has grown to become one of the most influential private travel companies in the world.  With 40 offices globally we offer a complete travel product.  Our business diversity ranges from vast numbers of individual tours (FIT), leisure group series and ad hoc group tours and covers a variety of ground travel products and services including hotels, restaurants, coaches and sightseeing products.  We provide suppliers with the distribution channels to maximise their revenue with our global reach.  We offer our clients extensive inventory and competitive rates through our XML API products and via the expertise of our Sales offices.

Clive Cornelius joined Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) in 2011 as programme manager, where he delivered projects related to CWT’s hotel offering. He then became business manager, EMEA and Global Partners Network, where he supported the EMEA leadership team to ensure delivery against CWT’s business plan.

In his current role as senior director, Global Card Products, Clive is responsible for CWT’s card product portfolio, managing the relationships with the banks and networks that clients use, and delivering card products and services to ensure a smooth payment process for travel booked via CWT.

Prior to joining CWT, Clive held project and programme management roles at Travelport. He has also worked with OAG and Natwest.

Filip is Director of Skyscanner for Business, an independent unit within Skyscanner offering a customizable suite of tools that are designed to power the travel internet. Filip leads a division of 40 employees from Sofia, where he set up a satellite engineering hub; his wider team are spread across the Edinburgh, Glasgow, Miami and Singapore offices, where the engineering and development team that powers Skyscanner for Business are located. Filip is responsible for overseeing the planning, growth and development of the affiliate and data analytic products that are currently powering over 300 partners. Filip joined Skyscanner in 2013 as a strategist in the Edinburgh office.

Previously, Filip held a variety of senior management positions in a wide range of industries and areas, including Travel Capitalist Ventures where he was responsible for evaluating start-up opportunities in the travel industry and Everbread Limited, where he was Deputy COO of the business’s airfare pricing engine. He has also held roles within business strategy and supply chain management in both New York and London. He is a regular keynote speaker at international travel and technology events, having spoken previously at Phocuswright and Web in Travel, amongst others.

Susan Carter is responsible for developing and leading the execution of the company's global marketing strategy. An energetic, resourceful, and talented business professional with extensive team building, project management, and problem-solving skills, Susan has 23 years of experience in marketing, product management, business analysis, and software development. Since joining Farelogix in 2005 in a product management role, Susan has very quickly risen through the ranks to increasingly senior executive leadership roles. 

Through her career, Susan has held a variety of senior marketing and product/project management roles focused on software applications for data warehousing, government, healthcare, and travel. Susan graduated Summa Cum Laude from Dartmouth College, and has received a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) designation from the PMI Institute.

Ian Taylor is executive editor of Travel Weekly Group, reporting online and in print for Travel Weekly and the daily Travel Weekly Business:am. He is responsible for much of Travel Weekly’s analysis of the sector and moderates many of the Travel Weekly Business events. Ian is a career journalist who has worked in travel for most of the last 15 years.

Joakim Everstin is a technology evangelist and head of innovation for Sabre’s Travel Network division.  In his role, Joakim is responsible for identifying emerging trends and technologies in travel, and overseeing the development of these into value-add products for Sabre’s customers.  He has been a frequent keynote speaker and panellist around innovation in travel, mobile technology and wearable devices at some of the world’s major technology and travel events, such as TTE,WTM, ITB, IFTM, Russia Internet Forum and Arabian Travel Market. 

Prior to joining Sabre, Joakim managed a successful company in Sweden, which provided Multi Variate Testing (MVT) and web analytics to help e-commerce companies optimise their e-commerce funnels.  Before this, Joakim held a key position within Scandinavian Airlines’ e-commerce team.

Liam is the Head of Product at Zapp, having been involved from the very start of building the new digital payment ecosystem.

He is an articulate, creative and energetic leader who is committed to delivering a world class payment experience by developing  consumer facing digital products that meet demanding retailer checkout requirements.

An active contributor to payment events, blogs, discussion groups and Twitter, Liam has been recognised as being a key influencer in the mobile payments industry. 

Prior to Zapp, Liam developed a breadth of payment solution experience working with some of the largest financial institutions in the world, most recently with PayPal and TSYS.

David and his team are at the forefront of the digital payments revolution. Dedicated to helping the UK’s largest and best known brands directly address some of the biggest challenges facing their businesses today. He knows that technology can transform customer engagement; deliver growth; protect against complex threats and ensure relevance in a highly competitive, mobile-rich environment.

After studying modern languages at Oxford and Business Administration at INSEAD in France, Simon joined the executive board of the Thomson Holidays Group and was subsequently  managing director of three well-known travel businesses. After setting up a strategy, marketing and sustainability consultancy, he became chairman of an international travel e-learning company and Visiting Industry Professor at Regent's Business School London.  Simon was appointed an executive director of Syntec in 2011, to support the growth and strategic development of their integrated contact centre systems including the fintech CardEasy 'keypad payment by phone system' for PCI DSS secure voice payments in contact centres.

Rachel Read is Head of Digital Trading at ETOA. She develops and directs the programme to increase member representation and services in this area.

Rachel re-joined ETOA after a six-year absence. During this time, she was an Insight Director at the consumer science company dunnhumby, heading up the analytics programme for Tesco digital and multi-channel media. 

Before joining ETOA, Rachel was Tour Operations Manager for the National Educational Travel Council (NETC) in Boston, USA. She also spent 12 years working as a tour manager for the same company.

Julie manages the London Market Management team, responsible for the consultative service the Expedia group delivers to its hotel partners across the city. 

With almost a decade of service at Expedia, Julie also spent more than two years advising Expedia’s Eastern European hotel partners on distribution strategy, before moving to the London office. Her first role in London was with Expedia’s online marketing team before she returned to the Lodging team.

Prior to Expedia she worked in revenue management for Les Hotels France Patrimoine and Hilton Hotels in Paris, respectively.

Julie holds an MBA in International Hospitality Management from IMHI (Cornell-ESSEC) and a Bachelor of Law from the University of Toulouse.  She speaks fluent French and English.

With a background in design and over 16 years of experience in travel marketing creative, sales and workflow management, Jim heads up Accord’s Business Intelligence proposition: developing cutting-edge tech to provide Travel businesses with relevant, accurate and actionable insights across all marketing channels.

Kevin O’Sullivan is the founder and Managing Director of Open Destinations and is the architect of the tour operator solutions being offered today. Prior to founding Open Destinations 15 years ago, Kevin was the Managing Director of Tourplan and E-commerce consultant for First Call Tickets. He spent five years as Group IT Manager in Tourism International, a large multi-site/multi-sector tour operator and hotel group. Kevin started his career in travel as a writer with the Rough Guides.

Jon has worked in the Travel Technology for 18 years and is a Global Director at the Travel Corporation where he has implemented CRM across the global business supporting Call Centre, Sales Teams, Marketing and Digital.

Jon has run two Travel Technology start-ups through to acquisition preparation and sale. specialises in CRM, Social Media, Mobile and Software Solutions for the Travel and Retail Marketplaces, Software Product Strategy, Business Strategy and Sales & Marketing.

Jon has delivered software solutions to enterprise level customers including Thomas Cook, TUI Travel, Cosmos, London Weekend Television, Granada Television, British Home Stores and Mothercare.

Jon is a regular contributor of articles and reviews to the Travel Trade press and the Music Industry, both online and in magazines.  Jon has been appeared on panels at business and technology events as a panel guest and presenter.

Over the course of his career, Peter has had many dealings with Hoteliers, Corporate Travel & Procurement Managers, Travel Agents, Travel Suppliers, Tour Operators and Destination Management Organisations worldwide. Today he is seen by many as a notable specialist and indeed a Guru in the world of Global Distribution Systems and the Internet, and the very important part that modern ICT technologies are playing in the world of global communications and electronic distribution. He is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences and a popular chair/moderator at various travel related conferences, forums and events both in Europe and the United States. He has also been interviewed on international television and radio on a number of occasions and is an avid futurist with a particular interest in M-commerce and emerging biometric technologies.

Lee has been covering the UK travel sector in various roles with the trade media for over a decade. He now heads up news output for leading title Travel Weekly and also edits its digital travel title Travolution that has been reporting on the online sector for 10 years this year. At TTE Travolution will unveil its annual Innovation Report analysing technology investment in the UK travel sector in 2015 and forecasting 2016.

Stephen has worked in both hospitality and retail for over 20 years and brings both operational and technical experience.  After gaining a BA Honours in International Hospitality Management from the University of Brighton he went on to work in Food and Beverage Operations at a senior management level.  It was during this time that he was assigned the role of co-ordinator for the installation of a new PoS system and the rest is history.  Moving into training and consultancy for a UK vendor he later returned to hotels as a Project Manager for Hilton UK and Ireland before branching off on his own as a Consultant, only to return to Project Management with one of the UKs leading PoS providers where he moved through the ranks and worked with some of the country’s largest leisure and holiday providers.  Following a short spell working in the Retail Sector Stephen returned to hospitality and joined Mandarin Oriental in August 2013 where he has experienced the challenges that come with managing the end to end provision of IT into a number of new and existing properties around the EMEA region.  The hands on management of these projects keeps Stephen’s understanding and knowledge of the constantly changing world of technology into hotels up to date and relevant.  He continues to work on major development and technical projects in the EMEA region.

Harry Tomi Davies (TD) is an IT Expert with a wealth of commercial and technology management knowledge and experience from FTSE 100 level companies in the UK, US and Africa including Total, Marks & Spencer, Ernst & Young and Sapient. He has been involved in the development of key commercial systems including the first Marks & Spencer website, the Opodo.com travel site and the UK Government portal (Direct.gov).

TD sits on the Board of a broad range of organisations, writes and blogs (occasionally) while maintaining a significant network of connections across most of the major social media platforms. He is a regular public speaker, advisor and mentor with a personal goal of “maximizing the creation of social and economic value by using digital technologies better”.

Damian Saunders is Strategy and Commercial Director at Sky Business, leading the out-of-home investment strategy and roadmap for product innovation. Over the past four years, Damian has been focused on the hotel sector, looking at premium content and connectivity both in rooms and across public areas of hotels. He has extensive experience developing tailored customer led propositions that drive value for both guest and operator. Prior to joining Sky, Damian held positions at Accenture and News Corp.

Working for companies handling millions of transactions a day to multinationals requiring global systems, Raj has designed and implemented enterprise-wide operational and financial systems across a variety of industries.

Improving production line processes, automating telecom, multi-media and internet services, as well as delivering complex projects in the UK, Europe, Africa, Asia and the U.S.A, Raj has been an advocate of advanced technologies that deliver a significant R.O.I.

The last 10+ years have been spent helping hotels and serviced apartment providers embrace new technologies.

At AVQuest, he has overseen a company that has expanded its services from the UK to Europe, Africa, Asia and Australasia. 

Xaveer is the Commercial Manager for Booking.com for Business. Responsible for overseeing the global commercial approach for Small and Medium Enterprises, Xaveer combines charismatic leadership with a high degree of all-round business acumen to pave the way in business travel for Booking.com.

Having achieved his Master’s degree in Innovative Hospitality Management from the ESADE Business & Law School in 2007, and already with extensive experience in both Hospitality and Project Management, Xaveer joined Booking.com in October 2008. In the course of the next seven years with the company, he built both career and reputation in management roles both in his native Netherlands and whilst overseeing operations in the East Coast of the United States. Driven, committed to results and with an energetic entrepreneurial flair, Xaveer now helps steer Booking.com for Business in its continued global development.

Mike started his career in hospitality in the early 90’s but came across the Internet in 1993, seeing the enormous opportunity he launched his first of many dot coms in 1995. He has been an innovator and disruptor within technology for the past 20 years and has found himself back working within hospitality in 2000 when he was involved with Wi-Fi and again today with mobile applications. He is at the forefront of a new wave of smartphone applications for hospitality but this time it is disruption that is at the heart of his model not innovation.