TrustYou Appoints Travel & Tech Industry Veteran Alan Young Vice President of Strategic Partnerships

by February 6, 2013 9:20 am Press Releases

TrustYou Appoints Travel & Tech Industry Veteran Alan Young

Vice President of Strategic Partnerships

 

Young to Lead Charge on Company’s Aggressive North American Growth Plans;

Strategic Focus on Key Travel Sector Relationships with

Educational Emphasis on Increasing Importance of ORM & Driving Results   

 

DALLAS – February 1, 2013 – Online reputation management (ORM) market leader for the hospitality industry, TrustYou, has appointed Alan Young as its VP of Strategic Partnerships.  The long-time industry veteran, who brings tremendous travel, technology and sales experience to the post, will focus on building relationships and driving revenue, with a bull’s-eye focus on travel and hotel technology companies, and related service providers.  Young, who will be instrumental in spearheading TrustYou’s aggressive growth plans in North America, will also be targeting destinations and key players in the online travel space.

 

Young, who will be based out of Ontario, Canada, brings three decades of in-depth industry experience and a proven track record in driving bottom-line results.  Most recently he was the VP, field marketing, for Infor, the second largest supplier of information technology solutions to the global hotel and gaming industry.  Prior to be promoted to field marketing, Young was VP, product management, product marketing and marketing for Infor Hospitality where he was instrumental in driving Infor’s new Hospitality Management System, now the leader in Cloud deployed solutions for the global hotel industry. Prior to this Young served in a variety of executive positions and advisory roles at companies such as Apical Resource Group, IBS Software Services, Hotel Booking Solutions Incorporated, Hotel Information Systems, and others, including his namesake venture, Alan Young Consulting.

 

From building companies from the ground, Young’s roster of accomplishments is lengthy and measurable.  His razor-focused, strategic approach across comprehensive business plans and sales and marketing strategies, has been instrumental in driving and maintaining significant client relationships throughout his hospitality technology tenure.

 

“This is an incredibly exciting time at TrustYou filled with amazing growth potential, new features and developments to our product and now, one of the most seasoned sales and marketing executives in the travel technology industry joining our team,” said Benjamin Jost, CEO and co-founder of TrustYou, of Young’s appointment.  “We know that Alan’s industry knowledge and connections, coupled with TrustYou’s innovative technology, will lead us to realizing the growth goals we’ve established for the next few years.”

 

One of Young’s major focus areas will be on key travel sector partners and how they use of ORM.  TrustYou’s  clients, an impressive list numbering over 10,000 inclusive of hotel brands, individual properties, countries and cities, is truly global. These travel players realize the benefits of ORM and the fact that these benefits extend beyond the hotels in their backyard.

 

“At the end of the day, online reputation management has a direct impact on revenue.  The more reviews, the more robust the management responses, the higher the rankings, all translate into increased sales and revenue,” Young said.  “TrustYou is an innovator in this space and I am incredibly excited about being part of such an innovative and strong team. TrustYou’s TrustScore and its survey and review distribution tools have an amazing impact on improving bottom line results for hotels, destinations and other key partners.  The online review space has brought an entire new level of transparency and accountability to the industry that is not going away; it is only growing.”

 

Young is past Chair of the board of the OpenTravel Alliance and has sat on the board of The Boutique Lodging Association.  He has also been a member of the American Hotel and Lodging Association e-business committee and the Hotel Technology Next Generation distribution workgroup.  He is a sought-after speaker and has made appearances at World Travel Mart, Hotel Operations and Technology Conference, the Hotel Association of Canada, HITEC, amongst others.

 

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About TrustYou
Since 2008, TrustYou has set the standard for reputation management with solutions for hospitality-industry businesses to analyze online reviews, tweets and posts across the social web, to gather trusted reviews directly from its customers, and to use the authentic conversations to successfully market online reputations.

TrustYou’s monitoring dashboards capture sentiment and opinions from millions of comments in one easy-to-view place from sources like Tripadvisor, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Yelp and more across 23 different languages. In addition, TrustYou provides free online customer satisfaction surveys and marketing tools for all hotels.  TrustYou's international team hails from 23 countries and speaks more than 20 different languages. The company already has more than 10,000 customers in 60 countries and monitors over 400,000 hotels, provide an extensive base for competitive analysis.  TrustYou’s clients include individual hotels, independent boutique chains, destinations and major global brands such as Accor, Marriott, Starwood, Hard Rock Cafes and Best Western Hotels. The company’s partnerships span an impressive variety of organizations; from tech companies like Google, Trust and Micros, to destination-specific alignment with Germany and Switzerland to develop the countries’ official star-rating systems for hotels. TrustYou’s headquarters are in Dallas, USA and Munich, Germany, with further representatives in the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Central Europe, Asia and Australia. To learn more about TrustYou visit www.trustyou.com.

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