This week in executive appointments in the travel industry, we have a big appointment from Hurtigruten and a number of new hotel moves.
This week Hurtigruten named John Downey its president of the Americas region. Downey will be based in the line’s Seattle headquarters and will be responsible for driving sales and profitability across the United States, Canada and South America, as well as broadening and deepening key travel agent relationships and opening new channels for growth, the cruise line said. Downey most recently worked at Amazon as GM and category leader for Amazon Go; prior to that, he led the team that introduced Amazon Meal Kits and held global leadership responsibility for Motorola’s Bluetooth wireless headset portfolio of over 20 product lines.
In hotel news, Enchantment Group promoted Jim Root from the general manager at the Mii amo destination spa to the company’s director of wellbeing. In addition to his current responsibilities at Mii amo, Root will lead development of new projects and provide strategic direction and oversight of wellbeing programming in the Scottsdale-based corporate office and at the company’s properties. He has over 40 years of professional experience in wellbeing programming development and property management.
A number of individual hotels and resorts also made new leadership appointments this week:
- The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua named Andrew Rogers its general manager.
- Kai Behrens became the new general manager of the Kempinski hotels in Istria, the Kempinski Palace Portorož and the Kempinski Hotel Adriatic.
- Kanit Sangmookda was named the general manager of Le Meridien Kota Kinabalu.
- Finally, Derek Haug was appointed as the general manager at Hotel Erwin, a boutique hotel in Venice Beach, California.
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