GORDON WILSON PRESIDENT AND CEO, TRAVELPORT GORDON WILSON JOINED Galileo International in 1991, four years after it was formed and ten years before it was
MIKE TANGNEY GLOBAL TRAVEL MANAGER, GOOGLE NOMINATED BY ASTRA ZENECA’S Caroline Strachan “for challenging the normal travel management model and building what’s right for his company’s culture”, Tangney has a keen interest in how mobile and social technologies will impact on the travel industry over the coming years. He is a member of the advisory board of GBTA Europe, and hopefully that should
acquired by the Cendant Corporation. The company was re-branded as Travelport in 2006, and Wilson was named president and chief executive of Travelport GDS one year later. He took over as president and CEO of the group in June 2011. In an interview published to coincide with last year’s World Travel & Tourism Summit in Japan, Wilson identified a string of technology trends, with use of mobile devices high on the agenda. “The world is changing and if you are not planning ahead you are not planning to survive,” he said
The next few years, he said, will bring “more content, more refined search parameters, more mobile, more customer profiling and an even faster pace of change”.
give him a platform from which to share his experiences in building Google’s travel programme “from the ground up”.
JASON CLARKE GROUP VP AND MD, GLOBAL SALES, TRAVELPORT WHEN STATESMAN TRAVEL’S joint managing director Mervyn Williamson nominated Jason Clarke for inclusion in BBT’s
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CEO, GILLESPIE’S GUIDE TO TRAVEL+PROCUREMENT SCOTT GILLESPIE DOESN’T so much think outside the box as tear the box to shreds and build something completely new from the result. His blog, Gillespie’s Guide to Travel+Procurement, has become the online equivalent of a best-selling blockbuster. He knows his stuff. With eight years as a management consultant at AT Kearney under his belt, he founded Travel Analytics and built it into the travel industry’s leading
SCOTT GILLESPIE
hotlist of corporate travel’s most influential people, he described him as “a young guy who has worked his way up through the GDS industry, to heading up Travelport Europe”. Clarke’s latest and expanded role requires him to focus on TMCs, online travel agencies and leisure travel agency customers “using Travelport’s capabilities to procure and retail travel products”. Then again, given the speed with which he has “worked his way up”, he may already have additional responsibilities – and even greater influence.
independent consulting firm, with clients such as Deloitte, Exxon Mobil, Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin and Microsoft. Travel Analytics was acquired by TRX in 2006, and Gillespie went on to lead the development of new analytical tools, including a carbon footprint calculator and a hotel data clustering application. He left TRX in 2009 and – in addition to penning Gillespie’s Guide – has become a sought-after speaker on the travel conference circuit, where he continues to break just about every mould going.
CHIEF EXECUTIVE, AIRPLUS INTERNATIONAL USA HE MAY HAVE RELINQUISHED the executive directorship of ACTE, but as the new chief executive of payments company Airplus International USA, Ron DiLeo is unlikely to be far from the industry limelight. DiLeo initially made his name as chief operating officer at TMC Rosenbluth International, where he spent 25 years. When Rosenbluth was bought out by American Express, DiLeo became Amex’s London-based senior vice-president and general manager for the EMEA region. Prior to joining ACTE some two years ago, he was the principal of In The Black, a consulting practice specialising in travel and business management performance. Welcoming his new recruit, Airplus International executive vice-president Volker Huber said: “Ron DiLeo will enable Airplus to forge ahead with its expansion in the US market. His international expertise will offer a substantial contribution to our global strategy.”
DiLeo says his new job is an opportunity to build on his previous career. “I am pleased to take over responsibility to further expand Airplus’ position as a leading global supplier of business travel payment solutions,” he said.