They are Ajay Rohila, who will take responsibility for the Indian subcontinent, Meltem Balkan, who will look after the Middle East, UK and Ireland and Carlos Correia, who will cover Portugal, Spain, South America, the USA and Canada.
All have strong track records of well over a decade in sales and account management, working for highly regarded companies in the travel industry.
Ajay has joined from WebBeds, where he was responsible for building new strategic partnerships in the Indian subcontinent. Previously, as Country Manager, he established the TransHotel Online Reservation System in India; he was responsible for channel sales in the Delhi and NCR Region for Thomas Cook; he was a senior client relations executive at Cox & Kings and he was a Sales Executive at Global Tour Management Company in Delhi.
Meltem has joined from Tripedia in Istanbul, where she was CMO, developing the Tripedia tours and activities platform through its start-up phase. Previously, she worked at Metglobal in Istanbul, where she managed a portfolio of meta and travel search sites, helped create the XML platform for Hotelspro and ran business development activities for B2B and B2C brands. She has impressive intellectual credentials, having won full scholarships to study as an undergraduate at Bilkent University in Ankara and as a postgraduate at Amherst in the USA. She enjoys working on the introduction of new technologies and analysing numbers.
Carlos is a life-long tourism evangelist. He joined from Altura Destination Services, where he was a Key Account Manager, responsible for sales, business development and marketing strategy. Previously, he was an Account Manager at Hotelbeds, and prior to that a Host Manager at Iberostar Resorts. He is fluent in four languages.
Denise Atkinson, Head of Sales, Marketing & Cross XMLs, said: “I am very pleased that we have been able to hire three such strong sales professionals. With them on board, we will be much better placed to achieve our objective of increasing turnover by 10%, as we will have more capacity to help of our loyal clients grow and to increase the number of clients who work with us through our various IT platforms. It will also be possible to organise ourselves on a geographical basis rather than on a product basis, which will enable us to operate more efficiently and to provide an increasingly seamless service.”
