Cheapflights Media has announced the departure of its CEO Chris Cuddy, with its Executive Chairman, Hugo Burge, assuming the additional role.

Cuddy leaves Cheapflights following his six-year commute between Boston and the London-headquartered company.

Hugo Burge joined Cheapflights in 2000 following his co-leadership of a management buy-in. He has performed several roles at Cheapflights including Head of International in which he launched the United States business which is currently the largest source of revenue for the company.

Chris Cuddy joined Cheapflights as Group Managing Director in 2005 and was promoted to CEO in 2008. He successfully led a period of exceptional growth including Cheapflights’ expansion into 8 countries. In 2010, Cheapflights was recognized for an unprecedented 7th consecutive year among the UK’s fastest growing privately-held technology companies by the Microsoft Sunday Times Tech Track 100 Award. In Early 2011 Cheapflights was also ranked in the Microsoft Sunday Times Profit Track 100 award for the second consecutive year.

Chris Cuddy commented, “I am extremely proud of the accomplishments of the Cheapflights team during our most recent stage of growth. Cheapflights has leveraged its strong British brand to become an international leader in travel search. In 2011, Cheapflights will connect over 100M website visitors and over 5M newsletter subscribers with millions of travel deals from hundreds of travel partners.”

Hugo Burge commented, “I want to thank Chris for his transformative contributions to Cheapflights, including his support during our recent acquisition of the Danish travel meta-search site Momondo.com earlier this year.

With Momondo aboard our operations are now more European-centric since our international presence has
been expanded there, especially in Scandinavia and Russia. Under Chris’s leadership the Company has grown tremendously and he will be missed.”

He added: “We remain very positive on the opportunities in global travel search and I am excited to lead
Cheapflights into its next period of growth from the firm base that Chris has helped to create for the Company.

Importantly, Chris has also built an experienced and dedicated team which forms a great foundation on which to continue to grow our leadership in online travel media.”