 COLIN O'NEILL
Sales and Marketing Director, Advantage Travel Centres After leaving university with a degree in Communications, Colin began his career in the tobacco industry with Rothmans International. He held a variety of sales roles during his time there and left the FMCG sector in 1987 to join Sealink.
At the time, Sealink had not long being privatized from the then British Rail and Colin was heavily involved in integrating Sealink into the private sector in the role of National Sales Manager.
The identified need to improve the standards of service to the customer saw Colin seconded to the Human Resources function as Quality Service Manager for two years; during which he introduced a company-wide staff suggestion scheme, introduced total quality management to the organisation and was actively involved in the cultural integration process of Sealink into Stena Line when it was acquired in 1990.
In 1993 Colin joined Thomson Holidays as General Sales Manager and was responsible for the development of a travel trade distribution strategy across the entire trade including a national sales office with over 100 staff.
Colin left Thomson Holidays in 1997 and joined the Forte Hotel Group where as Specialist Sales Director he had responsibilities for leisure sector contracting worldwide providing commercial support to an international portfolio of key hotel brands including Posthouse, Heritage and Le Meridien.
Colin joined Advantage Travel Centres in July 2000 as Sales and Marketing Director and he has responsibility for all member development, marketing and communications activity across the organisation’s 800 member outlets and with a combined turnover in excess of £3bn.
Advantage is the largest independent travel agents consortium in the UK and has been operating a Luxury Specialist membership division for over two years. | |
