NEWS – OPEN DESTINATIONS EXPANDS MANAGEMENT TEAM

Open Destinations has hired Lisa Sykes, formerly of GTA, as the new Head of Business Analysis in their London headquarters.

Sykes joins the team after 19 years with GTA, where she headed up the business analysis team that was responsible for delivering detailed technology requirements on a wide range of complex projects.

‘Lisa brings considerable travel and technology experience to our business analysis team,’ says CEO Kevin O’Sullivan.  ‘We are confident she can lead them in helping to further enhance our product and continue to meet the functional requirements of our customers.’

Sykes joins another recent alumni from the senior team at GTA, Brian Mebourne, who joined Open Destinations in the summer of 2012 as Senior VP of Technology, after 16 years with GTA.  The London office has also seen recent expansion of their team of business analysts, project managers and implementation consultants; amongst recent recruits was Simon Ferry, who joined from Comtec to head the implementation team.  The company now employs over 270 staff between the London headquarters and the development, support and outsourcing centre based in Goa, India.

The recent expansion in the UK office follows another successful year for the travel technology provider, which saw a 35% growth in business in 2012. O’Sullivan attributes the continued growth with a number of new projects in Europe, South Africa and Australia, in addition to a significant increase in spending within their existing client base.

Looking forward, O’Sullivan projects a similar growth in revenue for 2013, along with a further expansion within the project management and implementation teams.   “We have had a very strong start to the year and are currently looking at recruiting additional project managers and implementation consultants to support this progress.’