Thomas Cook Hotels and Resorts has appointed two senior hospitality figures in Spain as it continues its expansion with a focus on increasing its managed hotel portfolio.
Neil Evans, most recently Chief Operating Officer at Karisma Hotels & Resorts, joins as Director of Operations, reporting into Enric Noguer, Chief of Hotels & Resorts, to oversee all of Thomas Cook Hotels & Resorts’ 200-strong portfolio. His background includes 15 years at Tui where he undertook a number of commercial and financial roles before being managing director for its hotels division for 11 years.
Neil joins on 1st July and will be based in Thomas Cook’s Palma office, which now has more than 650 people based there across its finance, destination management and Hotels & Resorts divisions. Neil will oversee Thomas Cook’s 24 managed hotels in Spain and Greece as well as its 175 franchise hotels around the world and the company’s guest experience, training and CRM teams.
In addition, Cecilia Svane has joined from GCH Hotels, a leading hotel management company, as Head of E-commerce to support Thomas Cook Hotels & Resorts growing direct sales. Bookings through the company’s own hotel brand websites have more than doubled on the previous year thanks to new technology and revenue management and Cecilia’s appointment is part of a move to continue that growth.
The Palma-based appointments mean the hotel division now has around 1,650 people based in Spain including its Chief Hotels & Resorts, Enric Noguer.
Enric said: “Given our recent expansion with 12 new hotels already opened this summer, I wanted to add more strength within our operations team and bring together the teams across Spain and Greece as well as franchise hotels and guest experience, training and CRM under one leader. Neil’s experience in leading international hotel operations will complement the existing senior operations talent and help us to continue delivering great holidays for our guests.”
The company was recently ranked among the largest international hotel chains in Spain with a collection of around 12,000 rooms operating under the eight Thomas Cook hotel brands. In addition, this summer it will have 48 own-brand hotels totalling nearly 8,000 rooms open in Greece making us the largest international hotel chains in the country.
The Thomas Cook Group
Thomas Cook Group plc. is one of the world’s leading leisure travel groups, with sales of £9.6 billion in the year ended 30 September 2018. It is supported by 21,000 employees and has 200 own-brand hotels. It operates from 16 source markets and serves over 22 million customers annually. Thomas Cook Group plc’s shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange (TCG).
Thomas Cook Hotels & Resorts is the hotel division of Thomas Cook Group and has nearly 200 hotels across its eight own brands. With more than 40,000 rooms in 47 destinations around the world, it is one of the world’s top 40 hotel companies.
