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OPODO APPOINTS STUART WALTERS AS CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER
London, January 7, 2003
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| Opodo, the pan-European online travel
portal has today announced that Stuart Walters is to become its new
Chief Information Officer. Walters has an impressive technical IT record combined with extensive travel experience from his roles at STA Travel, Airtours and Dreamticket. For the past year he has worked for the consulting company, Nascence, specialising in technology infrastructure and operations design, build and roll out in the global travel sector. Clients include Disneyland Paris, Andbook and Opodo, where he worked closely with the in-house team on the development and building of the IT strategy and roll out of Opodo sites in Germany, the UK and France. Prior to working for Nascence, Walters was COO of Dreamticket.com where he had responsibility for both Operations and IT, from its earliest stages to operationalisation. He built and hosted a fully transactional e-commerce website and was responsible for all call centre and fulfilment activities in the UK and Germany. Before joining Dreamticket.com he was IT Director for Airtours UK Leisure Group / Going Places from 1997 to 1999. During his time with Airtours, amongst other things, he defined Airtours’ UK e-commerce strategy, set up a 500-seat call centre and rolled out a retail network to 750 stores and 5,500 users. Previous to his time at Airtours, Walters was Group IT Director of STA Travel Group where he led the development and rollout of a new product management system and implemented a multi-currency revenue accounting system. He had joined STA Travel after a 5-year stint at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) where as Systems Development Manger for Europe he had responsibility for six country operations. Walters’s earlier positions included various technical, programming design and project manager roles at Motorola (1985 – 1988) and 3M Gillette (1980 – 1985). Opodo CEO, David Scowsill welcomed Stuart onboard, saying that his newly created role was pivotal to the development of Opodo in Europe, “We are delighted that Stuart is joining us at such a key time in the company’s development. His wealth of knowledge in the IT and travel industries, will be invaluable in ensuring that we achieve our vision to become the online travel agency of choice for European travellers.” Commenting on his appointment Walters said: “I am very excited to be joining Opodo and relish the opportunity to play a key role in the development and implementation of a state-of-the-art travel and IT platform. Technology and travel expertise are crucial to the success of Opodo and I look forward to ensuring that the consumer’s experience of Opodo, as a fast and easy to use site, means they need never go anyplace else to fulfil all their online travel shopping requirements.” Walters will take up his CIO role at Opodo from January 6, 2003 Notes to editors About Stuart Walters Stuart Walters (42) is the new CIO of Opodo, the pan-European online travel service created by nine of Europe’s leading airlines. Prior to joining Opodo, Walters was a Director of the consulting company, Nascence, until December 2002. Specialising in technology infrastructure and operations design, build and rollout in the global travel sector, clients included Opodo, Disneyland Paris and Andbook Online. From 1999 to 2001, Walters was COO for Dreamticket.com where he was responsible for Operations and IT, from concept through to operation. His key roles included building and hosting a fully transactional e-commerce website and development and rollout of IT and Operations strategy in the UK and Germany, including multi-lingual call centre and fulfilment services. Prior to Dreamticket.com, Walters was IT Director UK Leisure Group for Airtours UK / Going Places from 1997 to 1999. His key responsibilities included development of the IT and Operations strategy for UK High Street and Direct retailing channels, rollout of a 750 site wide area network, rollout of all hardware and software into a new 500-seat call centre, planning and risk management and management of a team of 150. Walters joined Airtours from STA Travel Group where he had been Group IT Director from 1993 to 1997. During his time at STA Travel he led the rollout of a new product management system to the principal operating divisions, namely: US, UK, Germany and Australia, significantly reducing time lags in introducing new products and representing an industry standard. He joined STA Travel from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) where he was Systems Development Manager from 1988 to 1993, responsible for six country operations. Walters’ earlier roles included Project Manager, Motorola 1985 to 1988 and various technical, programming and design roles for 3M Gillette from 1980 to 1985. About Opodo Opodo launched its first site (www.opodo.de) in Germany in November 2001, its UK site (www.opodo.co.uk) in January and its French site (www.opodo.fr) in April 2002. Opodo is an online travel service created by nine of Europe's leading airlines - Aer Lingus, Air France, Alitalia, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa and Amadeus. Opodo addresses the real needs of today’s traveller by offering an unbiased and competitively priced online travel service for world travel, with access to flights from over 400 airlines, 30,000 hotel properties and a worldwide fleet of over 750,000 hire cars, as well as travel insurance. Further information about Opodo is available at www.opodo.com Media contact:
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