Thu, Mar 27, 2008
Is Former Travelocity Business Veteran
Virgin Charter, a new full service
online marketplace designed to match charter customers and
operators, announced Thursday that Eric Hofer has joined the
company as senior vice president, sales and customer service. Hofer
will oversee sales, strategy, and client services activities and
will report to CEO Scott Duffy.
Hofer is a veteran of the travel industry and most recently
spent four years at Travelocity Business where he served as vice
president of North American sales. He was responsible for the
growth of the company’s sales from $10 million at startup to
more than $1 billion annually.
Hofer also held senior management positions at Lancer Management
Inc., Tower Travel Management, Navigant International and Midway
Airlines Corporation.
“Eric is one of the most respected executives in the
travel industry and an outstanding addition to our management team
at this very exciting time,” said Duffy. “We recently
opened the Virgin Charter marketplace and are experiencing a
tremendous volume of trip requests from consumers and businesses.
Eric will be a key player in helping us develop partnerships with
corporate travel departments as well as high-end travel
consortiums.”
“Virgin Charter represents the future of private aviation
and will enable corporate travel departments to take advantage of
the benefits of private air travel in an efficient and
cost-effective way,” said Hofer. “During my years in
the business travel industry, I routinely heard from corporate
travel buyers that their organizations were increasing their use of
private aviation but that it was simply too difficult to find and
book charter aircraft that meet their safety and quality standards.
Virgin Charter has removed the friction points, making it easy find
and purchase charter air travel, essentially opening this channel
for growth.”
As ANN reported, Virgin
Charter launched its full-service online marketplace March 4,
following two Beta trials. The company launched a test program for
the service in June 2007.
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