Cheapflights Ltd, the international travel price search and comparison website, is pleased to announce that it has recruited Michael Bennett as General Manager (USA) and Charley Spektor as US Newsletter Manager.
Michael Bennett will report to Group Managing Director, Chris Cuddy and will be charged with the day to day development and profitability of the Company's US operations. He will be based at Cheapflights' Boston, Massachusetts office.
Michael Bennett joins Cheapflights from Monster.com, where he spent six years most recently served as Vice President of Strategy & Corporate Development for Monster's $100M Consumer Business. In his role as VP of Corporate Development, Mr. Bennett oversaw the management of the company's most significant business partnerships and defined the company's acquisition strategy. Michael had previously served as General Manager of Monster's Consumer Business, where he grew revenues 500% in three years. He also managed consumer advertising sales across Monster.com, Fastweb, MonsterTrak, and Making It Count.
Prior to Monster.com, Michael held several product and marketing positions with athletic footwear manufacturer Converse. During this time, he managed relationships with the company's advertising and public relations agencies, implementing national advertising campaigns across several product lines.
Michael started his career with Boston advertising agencies Ingalls, Quinn & Johnson and Houston Effler & Partners, developing advertising campaigns for clients in a number of sectors including the Media, Technology.
Michael graduated from Boston College with a BA in English and Communications.
Cheapflights is also very pleased to announce that publishing industry veteran Charley Spektor has been appointed Newsletter Manager to build on the Cheapflights Newsletter's success to date. Charley will report to Michael Bennett and took up his appointment on in late May. Charley has nearly 20 years publishing and editorial experience, the last six of which have been in newsletters. Cheapflights' newsletter programme has rapidly become one of the most comprehensive US travel deals newsletters for news and travel deals and already has 1.6 million subscribers. The Company intends to invest significant sums in the coming year to make it a market leader in the travel newsletter space.
Charley joins from TechTarget, Inc. where he was Senior Director, Product Management, Lead Generation Products responsible for a $20 million lead-generation newsletter programme driving business from IT buyers to industry vendors. Prior to TechTarget he was Business Director of Network World online newsletter, a division of IT publisher IDG. Previously he was Managing Editor and member of the award-winning Editorial Management Team for Network World magazine, the number one ranked computer network professionals magazine in the USA. Charley started his publishing career with the Longview Publishing Company as an Editorial Director developing stories fora series of New York City magazines.
After nearly ten years of profitable growth, Cheapflights Ltd. announced last year its intention to build its senior management team for its next phase of hyper-growth. Following key executive appointments over the past few months, the company intends to accelerate its growth by to exploiting the major opportunities open to it in the USA, UK, Europe and other overseas territories. With the appointment of the new General Manager, USA, Hugo Burge, Vice Chairman and Head of International, - who oversaw the launch and the initial growth of Cheapflights.com will be free to concentrate on exploiting the European and other market opportunities open to Cheapflights.
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David Soskin, Cheapflights' CEO, commented:
"Michael's appointment underlines the importance we attach to continuing to develop the enormous potential of flight price search and comparison in the vast US travel market. We are delighted that Michael will be working with us now to continue to grow Cheapflights' US business. The US is the biggest internet and flights market in the World. It is therefore no coincidence that Cheapflights' senior executive line-up now contains 4 Americans including our Group Managing Director. Importantly for Cheapflights, in taking over the baton from Hugo Burge, who so successfully launched Cheapflights.com in the USA, Michael will enable Hugo to devote his energies now towards opportunities in Europe and elsewhere.
Subscriber numbers to our US newsletters now total 1.6 million. Our newsletter is able to source content from our blog, Cheapflights News, for which we have not only our own staff contributors but also a "dream team" of travel household names as outside contributors. Charley Spektor's appointment is a further important step in our plan to make our newsletter the leading travel newsletter in the USA and we are very much looking forward to having him on board".
NOTES TO EDITORS
Cheapflights Ltd.Founded in 1996 and profitable since launch, Cheapflights is the UK’s leading UK flight price comparison website. Cheapflights.co.uk pioneered the travel price comparison model in the UK and introduced pay-per-click in the UK in 2000.
Cheapflights does not sell any travel products. Each day, it displays over one million constantly updated prices supplied by hundreds of travel partners worldwide. These deals can be accessed online or by telephone direct with the advertiser from links or information on our site. This makes Cheapflights one of the most comprehensive independent publishers online of flight and other travel deals available
Leading online measurement company Hitwise has described Cheapflights as ‘the UK’s favourite travel price comparison site’. The Company's unique user numbers globally reached 5.250 million in January 2006.
Cheapflights estimates that it generated travel product sales of over £1 billion for its advertising partners in 2005. These advertisers read like a Who’s Who of the travel world - ranging from British Airways, Thomson, Expedia, Travelocity and Thomas Cook to specialist operators like STA Travel , Llama Travel and Iglu.com.
Cheapflights is one of the few British internet companies successfully to establish an operation in the USA with Cheapflights.com. Launched in May 2003, with 2 million unique users a month it is already in the top 13 USA travel sites. The Company has also recently launched UK and USA "Flight News" blog sites with a view to these becoming major interactive communities to inform and assist travel consumers.
Cheapflights' independent status as an online travel price search and comparison and travel news site makes it a natural starting point for finding travel deals and up-to-date travel industry information.
Travel Web Sites:
www.Cheapflights.co.uk; www.Cheapflights.com;
"Flight News" Blog sites:
UK News: http://news.cheapflights.co.uk; US News: http://news.cheapflights.com
