CEO MONTHLY / ISSUE 7 2022 19 Mar22259 Shaping the Future of Travel eDreams ODIGEO is one of the world’s largest online travel companies and one of the largest European e-commerce businesses. The company’s leader, Dana Dunne has seen extraordinary success as Most Influential CEO, 2022 - London, the United Kingdom, so we had a chat with him to learn more about the company and his career. Firstly, please tell us about eDreams ODIGEO. eDreams ODIGEO is a one stop shop for consumer travel needs - the largest flight retailer globally outside China and one of the largest e-commerce businesses in Europe. Our business consists of four leading OTA brands – eDreams, GO Voyages, Opodo, Travellink, and the metasearch engine, Liligo. We serve more than 17 million customers per year across 44 markets and are listed on the Spanish Stock Market. What are your core values? Putting customers first sits at the core of our values, whether it’s developing our technology, improving the customer journey, or boosting our customer service. We also like to think of ourselves as trendsetters and encourage our staff, or ‘eDOers’, to take initiative and think outside the box. We also recognise that creating a fun, supportive environment and a diverse culture is essential and will allow us to take the business to new heights. What’s your leadership style? My main goal over the last seven years has been to create an agile and responsive business capable of adapting to a complex and ever-changing landscape. I’ve worked to create an organisation where teams have autonomy, take initiative and are not afraid to experiment. I also like to ensure that a culture of communication and community is embedded within the business. This approach has helped us weather many challenges over the years, most recently COVID-19. What’syour uniquesellingpoint? What makes us stand out is our constant focus on improving the customer journey through our techfirst approach. This, coupled with our unrivalled scale, has allowed us to substantially increase our market share over the years. We’re reinventing travel with our subscription product, Prime, a programme that allows customers to enjoy a wide range of benefits, including access to exclusive member fares, priority 24/7 customer service and early access to deals. We’re at the forefront of the innovation that’s revolutionising the way travel is consumed. We serve more than 60 million user searches every day, resulting in more than 9 billion different itineraries that are generated by combining travel options from over 690 airline carriers, allowing for a multitude of bookable combinations that cannot be found on any other platform. AI and tech innovation sit at the heart of our business, with our complex set of algorithms making over 452 million daily predictions to anticipate traveller needs and offer the ultimate breadth of choice to customers. What role do your staff play in the business’s success? Our eDOers are absolutely core to the success of the business and we’re very proud of the team we’ve built. We’re currently beginning the next phase of our growth, focusing on our position as a leading travel subscription business, and we plan to expand our global workforce by 50% over the next three years to support this. We’re always on the lookout for anyone who wants to make a difference, innovate, grow, and be the best. Working with people who wants to be part of a business that is bringing about real change will allow us to continue to drive tech innovation in the e-commerce sector. What challenges have you faced during your tenure? Being a global company means that we are constantly operating in a changing and diverse environment, which always pushes us to be agile and adapt our service and offering to shifting consumer needs and market circumstances while simultaneously leading the transformation of our industry in a way that relates to our customers. Throughout my tenure as a CEO, we’ve successfully weathered challenges in some of the markets in which we operate, ranging from economic, security or geopolitical events, which shows the strength of our business model and strategy. What are your plans for the next 12 months and beyond? We’re proud to continuously innovate and be able to leverage our tech capabilities to offer dynamic products to our customers. Prime is a key example of this – the first subscription product in the travel industry. In the last 12 months alone, this revolutionary product has grown by 182% and topped 2.4 million members, and we now expect 66% of our total bookings to be made by subscribers by as early as 2025. In line with this success, over the next 12 months and beyond, we’ll be continuing to transition from a transactionbased business into a subscription business. With regards to your own career, what plans do you have to build upon your current success? My focus is to continue leading eDreams ODIGEO in its mission to reinvent travel. I’m not just leading a business that is evolving, I am leading a business that is revolutionising the travel industry and making a difference for millions of people. In terms of my career as a business executive, working with our amazing team of eDOers to achieve this goal is the most inspiring task imaginable. Company: eDreams ODIGEO Contact: Dana Dunne Email: [email protected] Website: www.edreamsodigeo.com 3 4
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