Lastminute.com creates B2C and B2B divisions

The future of lastminute.com UK managing director Mark Jones within the organisation has yet to be confirmed with the announcement of a major management restructuring.

Two new company-wide divisions are being created to cover business-to-consumer and business-to-business across 13 European countries.

Business-to-consumer, including the lastminute.com brand, will be headed by current Italy and Spain managing director and group consumer strategy chief Alfonso Castellano. He becomes senior vice-president of lastminute owner Travelocity Europe and group managing director of consumer brands.

Commercial director Vic Darvey is being promoted to vice-president distribution and business development responsible for private labels and distribution deals.

Holiday Autos managing director Brian Murphy is also promoted to vice-president holidayandmore, the umbrella organisation for the car rental business and medhotels.com.

“UK managing director Mark Jones will work directly with CEO Ian McCaig to build out the B2B organisation,” a statement said. “Mark’s role subsequent to this build phase being completed will be the subject of a future announcement.”

McCaig told TravelMole that Jones had been instrumental in planning the realignment of the company and would continue to work with him on implementing the changes.

There would be “lots of opportunities” within the global Sabre/Travelocity organisation for Jones.

“We are talking to Mark about of bunch of stuff in terms of what he wants to do going forward,” said McCaig.

The new European structure sees the role of chief operating officer created, with chief financial officer Ed Kamm appointed to the role.

Group marketing, technology, product, human resources, legal and programmes teams will work as central shared services supporting both divisions.

McCaig said: “This will see us move to functioning with much more focus and delivering a better proposition to customers and partners, while driving true teamwork at a European level and with the rest of the Travelocity and Sabre family globally.”

*Lastminute.com has unveiled an intuitive ‘virtual travel agent’ booking engine, nicknamed Judith after holiday TV presenter Judith Chalmers.

Travel director John Bevan said: “With Judith we are launching the new generation of online holiday bookings. It is like a virtual online travel agent, extremely clever and it can anticipate customers’ next moves, point them in the right direction to find the perfect and most suitable holiday in terms of type of holiday, price, dates, airport departure, destination and hotel.”

by Phil Davies