Zekiye Yucel, managing director of The Discovery Collection, is this week’s TravelMole Time Traveller, sponsored by Harp Wallen.
What was your first job in travel
Sales and marketing assistant
What was the high point of your career?
Working with Barbara Cassani at the start of the low cost airline Go, until the easyJet takeover
What was the low point?
11 September: I remember it very well as I was due to travel to Barcelona for a meeting. I came out of the meeting at Stansted to find all my colleagues watching the screens with disbelief. No-one understood what was going on. I still took the taxi and travelled to Luton for my flight to Barcelona, to find out that easyJet had cancelled the flight. I then travelled back home and cried while watching the BBC 24-hour news all night long.
Who has had the biggest influence on your career?
Barbara Cassani. She thought me to think big, be fair and put quality first before profit regardless of the size of the business.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time?
I would like to travel across Europe and write my travel book involving local cultures and cuisine, especially in Italy where my original routes came from.
What would you be doing now if you weren’t in travel?
I would be working as an architect.
Where was your last holiday, and where would you like to go next?
For our last holiday we travelled across Turkey from Cappadocia to East and West of Black Sea coast. It was really nice (I put the itinerary together for 16 of us) and managed to see so much of this delightful country in such a short space of time.
We would like to go to Jordan for a 10-night touring holiday as a family as me and my husband visited the country briefly before and fell in love with what we saw. I would like to spend more time in Petra and Jerash this time to feel the atmosphere and try to envisage and understand the civilisation that built it.
