Scotland-based travel agency Skyscanner recently announced that its current Chief Executive Officer Bryan Dove has decided to step down from his role citing family reasons. However, Dove will remain as a Senior Advisor to the company.
Dove will now be replaced by Moshe Rafiah as the new CEO. Rafiah currently serves as the Founder and CEO of Travelfusion. He will continue to remain in the role as both the companies are owned by Trip.com. Rafiah was already the Vice Chairman of Skyscanner.
Travelfusion was bought by Trip.com (Earlier Ctrip) in January 2015 for roughly $160mn. Travelfusion was one of the pioneering metasearch engines in the early-2000s, eventually shifting to a B2B model to aggregate air content for partners. While Skyscanner was taken over by the China-based online travel giant in December 2016 for $1.75bn.
Dove took over from Co-founder and CEO Gareth Williams at Skyscanner in May 2018. He had joined the company as Chief Technology Officer in 2015.
Speaking on his departure, Dove said,”It has been an honour to lead Skyscanner as CEO and CTO before that. Being part of Skyscanner has been one of my greatest professional privileges. While it’s hard to step away at this time, and despite the current challenges the world is facing, I’m confident that Skyscanner’s future is brighter than ever.”
Dove’s biggest achievement as CEO came in November last year when the company introduced what it called a “marketplace” approach to the business. Skyscanner became the merchant of record for air bookings for the first time as part of its shift away from the metasearch-only model.
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