The former chief executive at Great Rail Journeys, Peter Liney, has become the non-executive chairman at Tour Partner Group, a B2B tour operator and destination management company.
Tour Partner Group has also appointed a new chief financial officer, Alex Graves, and Roxy Shakerifar to the newly-created role of group people director.
The group brings customers to the UK, Ireland, and the Nordics from markets such as Germany, France, the US and Asia.
Working with agents and operators, it arranges travel experiences for more than 150,000 customers every year.
The company said it is seeing a “rapid” recovery from the pandemic and this “industry-leading talent” will support its next stage of growth.
More: Finance chief promoted to steer Great Rail Journeys
Liney has three decades of senior leadership experience within travel, stepping down from Great Rail Journeys in September after nine years.
Before that, he was chief executive of STA Travel for five years, and began his career at British Airways where he spent 11 years in strategic and sales-related roles.
He also serves as a non-executive director at APT Travel Group, one of Australia’s largest tour operators.
Graves joins from his role as group financial controller at Big Bus Tours. Previously, he spent nine years at Deloitte where he was a senior manager.
Shakerifar joins from fitness brand Sweaty Betty, where she was head of people for two years. Before that, she held various people roles at Scott Dunn, the luxury, tailor-made travel business.
Year-to-date revenues are about €70 million and the group expects year-on-year growth in 2022 to be more than 450%.
Paul Maine, chief executive of Tour Partner Group, thanked outgoing chairman Mark Mayhew and chief financial officer Mark Pharoah for their contributions to the group, adding: “They have both been instrumental in transforming Tour Partner Group into the global, multi-destination platform that we are today, and most recently their support and dedication during the pandemic has enabled us to come out stronger and help deliver this year’s results.”
He continued: “Our performance to date in 2022 is indicative that our strategy of having a diversified destination mix, product offering, and customer base has allowed us to remain resilient during the pandemic and lay the foundation for our success this year.
“Although the last three years have been incredibly challenging and continue to be operationally complex, the continued recovery of international travel is highly encouraging, and we look forward to building our partnerships and welcoming increasing numbers of travellers to all our destinations in the coming year.”