Travelzest is appointing Robin Sutherland as Managing Director of holiday.co.uk, which is central to Travelzest’s online distribution strategy, effective 23rd April.
Robin joins from Expedia.co.uk, the largest online travel distributor in the UK, where he has worked for over five years, first as Director of Customer Analytics and latterly as Director of Retail. Robin has been instrumental in shaping Expedia’s retail and merchandising strategy and defining its dynamic package promotion model. He built the analytics function in the UK from scratch and optimised marketing spend from mid-2003, which resulted in significant year-on-year growth for 2004.

Previously Robin was a Customer Relationship Manager at TheFirstResort.com and worked in market analysis roles for British Airways, Norton Rose, Northern & Shell, BPI Group and Farmfoods.

Travelzest’s holiday.co.uk and flight.co.uk websites have recently been relaunched with enhanced content and functionality. Holiday.co.uk moves from being a third party package holiday distributor to a full service online holiday portal providing a broad range of holidays, including dynamic packaging and access to the content of the Group’s specialist tour operators.

Commenting on his move to Travelzest, Robin Sutherland, said:

“I was looking for a new challenge and believe there is an exciting opportunity at Travelzest to create something different that offers travellers and holiday-makers a wide range of choices, including the ability to book specialist, tailored holidays on the internet. I am very much looking forward to working with Chris, Nishma and the rest of the team.”

Commenting on the appointment, Chris Mottershead, Group Chief Executive, said:

“We are delighted to have attracted someone of Robin’s calibre to lead the ongoing development of our holiday.co.uk online portal. Robin’s experience in the online travel market and his understanding of consumer behaviour will be invaluable in further defining the strategy for this business and driving traffic towards the Group’s specialist tour operators’ websites.”
——-