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Thomas Cook retail chief joins STA Travel
Thomas Cook head of retail Samantha Stimpson is leaving to join STA Travel Group.
Torey Kings-Hodkin will be resuming her position as Thomas Cook head of retail, South, from November 1, reporting to Kathryn Darbandi.
This follows her secondment to commercial, where she most recently covered Kelly Cookes’ maternity leave as head of commercial partnerships and sales planning.
She will lead a team of STA’s country managers and the director of global partners.
"This is a very exciting time for the STA Travel Group and I am very keen to get started," she said.
"I am looking forward to meeting with country managers and other key stakeholders in the coming weeks."
She will be based in STA Travel’s London office and will report into CEO Ivan Walter.
Stimpson has headed up Thomas Cook’s retail network since January 2018. Before that she was head of operational development.
Before joining Thomas Cook she worked for TUI in a number of roles, including head of sales for TUI Ski, sales director and multi channel distribution director for TUI’s Specialist Holidays Group.
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Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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