dnata Travel Group Expands B2B Trade Partnership Team

Friday, Jan 06, 2023 0

dnata Travel Group has added two new members to its Trade Partnerships team with the appointment of Raymond McErlaine as Trade Partnerships Manager for Scotland and Northern Ireland, and Kym Coulbeck as Head of Trade Support. Coulbeck and McErlaine will be in their new roles by 9th and 16th January respectively.

Raymond McErlaine began his travel industry career in 1990 as the first Glasgow-based employee for Travel 2, before moving to Qatar Airways in 2006 to work in the field sales team. From Qatar Airways, he moved to Virgin Atlantic in 2011, where he was Partnership Development Manager until 2020. Following redundancy that year, he joined the front line of the effort to tackle the Covid pandemic working to collect blood swabs for Ipsos Mori, before returning to the travel industry to provide maternity leave cover as Account Manager at Newmarket Holidays. He will report into Head of Trade Partnerships, Colin Currie, with a remit to support dnata Travel Group’s agent partners and homeworkers across the fast-recovering Scottish and Northern Ireland markets.

Kym Coulbeck replaces the recently promoted Karen Fletcher as Head of Trade Support, and returns to the B2B team following a period working as Sales Development Manager for Gold Medal between 2007 – 2011. She has since worked as Head of Sales at JTA, and as a Business Development Manager at both ITC The Travel Directors, and as Sales Director at Black Opal Travel Group.

Coulbeck will report to Fletcher, and be based at the dnata Travel Group B2B head office in Leyland, Lancashire. Her responsibilities will include Managing the Agency Sales Team in Leyland and supporting the Field Trade Partnership team, management of the Farebank agent reward scheme, setting up and hosting agent fam trips and events, negotiating commercial agreements, brochure distribution and to be the conduit between the trade and B2B team as a whole.

Karen Fletcher, Trade Partnerships Director, dnata Travel Group B2B, comments: “We’re really pleased to have Raymond join the team, and to welcome Kym back to the B2B fold. They’re both highly respected and talented professionals – and together are further evidence of our growing confidence as we enter 2023. Travel agents are at the absolute heart of what we do, so further expanding the team responsible for making sure their every need is met can only be good news for them.”