London (UK) & Boston (USA) (January, 29, 2008) -- Cheapflights Ltd., the leading UK and North American Internet media travel company, which pioneered online flight price search and comparison in 1996 is pleased to announce the appointment of Paul Hecht as group product director effective immediately.
Hecht will be based in London and report to Cheapflights' group managing director, Chris Cuddy. He will be responsible for coordinating product development globally including the comprehensive Web site redesign planned for this year which will facilitate further international launches.
"I am delighted to welcome Paul to lead product development at Cheapflights. He has a deep background in global online travel and will serve as our leading consumer champion,” said Cuddy. “Paul brings a passion for designing products and joins our executive team that averages more than 12 years experience in each of their respective fields of travel, technology, and media. Paul’s arrival coincides with our significant investment to expand our international growth. "
Hecht brings to Cheapflights more than 15 years of experience in product development. Most recently, he served as senior product director at Expedia where he led product design. As the second employee hired at Expedia.ca, Hecht developed the product roadmap and designed the Web site that led the business from a startup to annual revenues of more than $500M. At Expedia.co.uk, he helped build the site in to the UK’s “best online travel agent” as recognized by e-tid. He also supported the launch of Expedia Corporate Travel. Previously, at ICE Digital, Hecht led teams on complex web design engagements for a wide range of clients including First Choice Travel, Tennis Canada, and ONEX, one of Canada’s largest corporations. At Digital Fusion Media, Hecht produced early versions of the successful interactive children’s CD-ROM titles “Mazlo’s Adventures.”
"Cheapflights' serves the millions of online users searching for flight deals and travel information, as well as providing an outlet for the travel industry to advertise flight deals online. I look forward keeping Cheapflights at the forefront of service to our users and advertisers on our existing UK and North American sites as well on our planned international sites," added Hecht.
Hecht graduated in 1992 from Concordia University - Montreal with a Bachelor of Arts in communications studies/philosophy. He retains an interest in Ice Hockey where since 1999 he has been an "Off-Ice Official" of the Canadian National Hockey League. Hecht is an accomplished traveller comfortable in destinations that offer snowboarding or scuba diving.
About Cheapflights Ltd.
Cheapflights Ltd.: (www.cheapflights.co.uk) was launched in 1996 and pioneered the concept of online flight price search and comparison. It was the first UK dotcom to introduce pay-per-click in 2000 which helped to transform online advertising. Cheapflights publish flight deals from airlines, budget airlines, online travel agents and the long tail of other specialist flight deal providers. Cheapflights therefore provide consumers with rapid, easy to use comparisons of hundreds of flight deals from the broadest online selection of travel operators. The site is valued by travel industry advertisers as a neutral, high-traffic source of quality high-conversion consumer leads. It launched its US site www.cheapflights.com in May 2003 which has rapidly grown and which now provides half of Cheapflights' 6 million monthly unique users. Its Canadian site www.cheapflights.ca soft launched in April 2007 is already enjoying traffic of over 100,000 monthly unique users. Cheapflights' status as an independent 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 on both sides of the Atlantic.
