Travelport has announced a heightened leadership focus and new expanded roles within its Europe, Middle East and Africa agency-facing teams.
The appointments, which build on internal appointments recently announced in its Americas and global sales teams, are all aimed at responding to the growth opportunities Travelport has identified in certain key geographies and customer segments and more tightly aligning its commercial leadership around them.
With immediate effect, the following internal appointments have been made in Europe, the Middle East and Africa:
- Rabih Saab, formerly leader for Africa, Middle East and South Asia, expands his responsibilities to include Europe and is charged with further accelerating Travelport’s recent growth in the region. Rabih joined the company in 2005 and led the set-up of Travelport’s new direct operations for travel agents across the Middle East. Prior to joining Travelport, he held senior executive roles in a number of international organisations including the French company, Chantelle, Japan Tobacco International and Procter & Gamble.
- Marcin Pilarski, who formerly led Travelport’s Eastern European region, moves to head up Product and Marketing on a global basis for Agency-facing teams. Pilarski, a marketing graduate, joined Travelport in 2003 and before then held a number of senior roles in the travel industry including running a car rental network operating across Europe.
- Damiano Sabatino, who previously headed up Western Europe, now leads the newly created region of Southern Europe and North Africa, and has responsibility for driving Travelport’s growth and expansion into these strategically important territories. In particular, Sabatino will be looking to optimize the high trade dependencies between Europe and North and West Africa. Before joining Travelport in 2008, Damiano held senior technical and commercial roles in a number of high profile telecommunications and technology companies including Motorola, Telecom Italia and SITA.
- Simon Ferguson will lead Northern Europe in an expanded role which sees him add the Benelux region, Germany, Austria and Switzerland to his current responsibilities of the UK, Ireland and Nordic countries. Prior to joining Travelport, Simon spent 20 years in business, consumer and technology media, including eight years as Chief Executive of the UK’s Travel Weekly Group. With Simon’s promotion, Paul Broughton will now head up the UK and Ireland, and Peter Cramon will head up the Nordic countries.
The above appointments complement and build on other recent appointments in Travelport’s agency-facing commercial team, headed up globally by Jason Clarke, which named Scott Hyden as head of Travelport’s newly established Enterprise Customer Group (comprising global OTA customers, multinational TMCs and Corporate customers) and confirmed Bret Kidd in Hyden’s former role of Managing Director for the Americas.
Commenting on the changes, Jason Clarke, Travelport’s Global Managing Director for Agency Commerce, said: “The appointments we are announcing today in Europe and North Africa give new strength and depth to our EMEA regional team and allow us to leverage our presence and our unrivalled travel commerce platform offering more fully across this highly varied and complex region.
“The expanded leadership team also means we can now better focus on some previously unexploited opportunities within the region.”
Simon Ferguson commented: “I am delighted to be leading the Northern European territory for Travelport, a region with a dynamic mix of retailers, and one that holds great potential for our Travel Commerce platform. We already have a strong track record of diversified content and technology, and I look forward to accelerating this in the countries in the region.
“With this newly created position we can better serve our customers in the region with more dedicated resource and ultimately grow our business further.”