Opodo

, the pan-European online travel portal has today announced that Stuart Walters is to become its new Chief Information Officer.
Walters has an impressive technical IT record combined with extensive travel experience from his roles at STA Travel, Airtours and Dreamticket. 

For the past year he has worked for the consulting company, Nascence, specialising in technology infrastructure and operations design, build and roll out in the global travel sector.  Clients include Disneyland Paris, Andbook and Opodo, where he worked closely with the in-house team on the development and building of the IT strategy and roll out of Opodo sites in Germany, the UK and France.

Prior to working for Nascence, Walters was COO of Dreamticket.com where he had responsibility for both Operations and IT, from its earliest stages to operationalisation.  He built and hosted a fully transactional e-commerce website and was responsible for all call centre and fulfilment activities in the UK and Germany.

Before joining Dreamticket.com he was IT Director for Airtours UK Leisure Group / Going Places from 1997 to 1999.  During his time with Airtours, amongst other things, he defined Airtours’ UK e-commerce strategy, set up a 500-seat call centre and rolled out a retail network to 750 stores and 5,500 users.

Previous to his time at Airtours, Walters was Group IT Director of STA Travel Group where he led the development and rollout of a new product management system and implemented a multi-currency revenue accounting system.  He had joined STA Travel after a 5-year stint at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) where as Systems Development Manger for Europe he had responsibility for six country operations. 

Walters’s earlier positions included various technical, programming design and project manager roles at Motorola (1985 - 1988) and 3M Gillette (1980 - 1985).

Opodo CEO, David Scowsill

welcomed Stuart onboard, saying that his newly created role was pivotal to the development of Opodo in Europe, “We are delighted that Stuart is joining us at such a key time in the company’s development. His wealth of knowledge in the IT and travel industries, will be invaluable in ensuring that we achieve our vision to become the online travel agency of choice for European travellers.”

Commenting on his appointment Walters said: “I am very excited to be joining Opodo and relish the opportunity to play a key role in the development and implementation of a state-of-the-art travel and IT platform.  Technology and travel expertise are crucial to the success of Opodo and I look forward to ensuring that the consumer’s experience of Opodo, as a fast and easy to use site, means they need never go anyplace else to fulfil all their online travel shopping requirements.”

Walters will take up his CIO role at Opodo from January 6, 2003

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(20/09/2002) Opodo Announces New Chief Executive Officer

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