With a bag full of experience in tourism, skiing and hospitality, Meet Adam Walsh, Regional Manager, STAAH UK/Europe
Tell us a bit about your career in hospitality/ technology and the journey to STAAH
“I started my career in the tourism and hospitality industry as Ski rep in the French Alps in the 80’s, undoubtedly one of the best decades, if you exclude padded shoulders and dodgy haircuts. These early years saw me working with hoteliers in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey and Kenya with classic tour operations managing thousands of weekly arrivals, on charter flights from UK airports to holiday destinations across Europe.
Fast forward into the 21st century, and I started working with lastminute.com to set up their Ski programme, then with Hotels4U working on supplier integrations and channel managers, which is where I first came across STAAH; at that time back in 2010, they only had 700 hotels, and now we have over 10,000!
What do you like most about STAAH and your job?
For the past few years I was working for companies that were part of huge multinational conglomerates, the possibility to instigate change diminishes with every layer of bureaucracy, and that is one of the really important things that I enjoy at STAAH, it is a very flat structure, and everyone is open and ready to listen to new ideas. Starting at STAAH a couple of weeks before the COVID pandemic took hold has been challenging, but also a lot of fun, it has allowed me to get involved at many levels, getting to know lots of our customers, channels and partners; I am always happy to bounce ideas around and see how we can move forward when things get tough.
Your success mantra?
I challenge everything that doesn’t look right or make sense to me, that way I can make things better and learn the things that I don’t know about. There is nothing worse than someone who thinks they know it all, they seldom learn anything new.
Your interests outside STAAH. Do they help you do your job better?
I used to spend a lot of time in the Alps skiing, now I play football and have been known to run the odd 10K, I also cook, bake cakes and build websites in my spare time! I think it is really important to keep active, gives you great energy for everything that you do.
To connect with Adam, email adam@staah.com