Problem: Companies spend $100 billion p.a. on Meetings, Incentives, Conferences & Events. One of South Africa's top four banks' planning, procurement, cost-containment and supply chain could not be controlled by management nor their ERP (SAP).Solution: To design and build a system to deliver transparency, and policy compliance, reign in the supply chain and deliver cost savings.The system is seen as disruptive, industry game-changer that needs to be embraced as post-pandemic the industry is re-bounding.

Leading a creative and development team, we specialized in providing marketing and travel tech solutions for airlines, tour operators, associations & Online Travel Agencies. Problem: The tour operator; Holiday Factory wanted to compete with Thompsons Travel; the industry leader with far larger budgets & operations.Solution: We developed a back, mid and front end system that consolidated the ever-fluctuating dates, air and land rates, allowing for faster, easier package development. The data and rich content automatically populated their site targeting the traditional B2B market & growing the more profitable B2C business model. Combined with a new, dynamic brand repositioning, Holiday Factory gained an additional 30% market share, outgrowing Thompsons in under three years.

Holiday Holdings GroupHoliday Tours needed to embrace technology and reduce manual & time-consuming functions. Solution: Through new campaign management, business positioning, guerilla marketing & creative online & offline tools for the agents & B2C customers, we moved Holiday Tours to 30% direct customer sales within eighteen months leading to Comair’s majority share investment in 2011. Other Holiday Holdings airline, cruise & hotel brands benefited from my ability to apply practical, yet creative marketing & sales solutions.Wassp: Invested in a traditional ad agency and migrated it to a strategic marketing & digital advertising business. Responsibilities included sales, strategy development and marketing. Developed VW & Audi portal. Built tour operator back, mid & front end system, transforming the client into the market leader.

I sat on the Outbound board for the R3 billion p.a. travel giant, honing skills such as board practices, accountability and delivery for American Express, travel.co.za, Seekers Travel and six other brands. My role included the conceptualising or procurement (within budget) of all corporate/leisure technology platforms and presentation material while being part of the corporate sales team. I designed and managed all web-based systems, including travel.co.za, private fare databases, search engines & portals. During my time, I developed and directed their in-house ad agency for speed and cost savings.

Problem: Tourvest had bought the license rights to lastminute.com; Europe's largest online travel & lifestyle business. However, two MDs later the business was losing R5-6 million p.a. with a further R7 million contractual Capex commitment. The Imperial Group had bought the majority share of Tourvest and lastminute.com was a board problem needing a solution.Solution: I was appointed as the third Managing Director, cut costs, re-defined the business model to work for the SA market and brought it to profitability in two years.