Thomas Cook ecommerce head joins Alpharooms
Discount accommodation specialist Alpharooms has appointed Thomas Cook head of ecommerce Chris Thorpe as managing director to lead the expansion of the brand under its new owners, Truly Holdings.
Thorpe said he intended to focus on expanding the dynamic packaging side of the business, which until now has focused on hotel-only sales.
He replaces Jacky Bedlow who left the business in February.
"Having headed up online at Thomas Cook for three years, I was looking for a new challenge~and I felt that the opportunity presented to me by alpharooms.com was complementary to my skill set," he said.
"With advertising costs continuing to escalate, it has never been more important to maximise revenue by selling flights, transfers and other ancillaries as well as accommodation. We see the potential for a lot of growth by simply expanding operations in this way."
Alpharooms, which has been trading for more than 18 years, was acquired by Truly Travel Group in November last year. Truly Travel, which has a contract to provide Teletextholidays.co.uk with holidays on an exclusive basis, together with Alpharooms, is targeting nearly a million holidaymakers in 2016/17.
Truly director Kumar Edara said "The additional distribution via the~alpharooms.com~online platform is highly complementary to the phone-to-book distribution we have via our long-term partnership with~teletextholidays.co.uk.
"It has more than~doubled our hotel purchasing volumes, allowing us to deliver more customers to both our bed bank and direct hotel partners, which is crucial to securing the market-leading hotel rates that will drive our continued expansion."
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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