SHANGHAI 16 October 2018: Hotelbeds Group has appointed Andrew Hughes as Asia Pacific (APAC) regional director for sourcing.
He will be responsible for all commercial aspects relevant to hotel suppliers, reporting directly to Sam Turner, wholesale sales & sourcing director with global responsibility.
Prior to this appointment Hughes worked at Hotelbeds Group in hotel sourcing for the group’s GTA brand.
He started his hotel industry career with Best Western Australia before moving to IHG, where he was responsible for 43 hotels in Australia and New Zealand.
In 2012, Hughes moved into the distribution space to work for GTA and relocated to Singapore.
Regional management posts have also been confirmed, all from within the group. Maria Garcia will be the head of Thailand and Patrick Torres had been named head of East Asia. In regional manager roles, Andrew Boocock has been appointed to the Pacific region; Colm Flanagan will cover Southeast Asia; Dan Zhao will be in charge of Indochina and the Philippines; and Marta Gonzales supervises China and Taiwan.
The group’s product portfolio has also been expanded to over 170,000 hotels, and over 60,000 travel-selling clients now use the platform.
Recently, the group confirmed that all of its bedbank brands – Hotelbeds, Bedsonline, Tourico Holidays, and GTA – would migrate to the same technology platform by the close of this year.
Earlier this year, the group also announced plans to increase its sourcing teams globally by as many as 200 people in order to drive exclusively contracted hotels by 10,000 over the coming three years.
For Hotelbeds Group, growing the business in the APAC region is a top priority. China remains the number one source market in the wholesale channel for Hotelbeds Group in Asia-Pacific and is now the fourth biggest for the group globally, up from fifth place only last year. Other top Asian source markets include India, South Korea, Indonesia and Australia.
