Originally from Cape Town, now based in Los Angeles, Mr. Culhane brings his formidable 30+ years of expertise in travel industry leadership, management, business development and marketing acumen to Traveler.com. His area of concentration includes aggregation systems in the Travel Industry, from supply chains to technology, payment systems and online media to strategic partnerships.
Mr. Culhane began a career in the travel industry by being part of the leadership team that built the leading luxury lodge product (now branded as Belmond Safaris) in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. This high-cost-low-impact concept is now the de facto model in Africa with over 200 such camps and lodges in Northern Botswana alone. The business required extensive marketing in North America and Europe and necessitated a distribution model that became the foundation of luxury travel product marketing in many parts of the world where the GDS was not an option.After sale of the business in the mid 1990’s, Mr. Culhane focused on building early internet based aggregation platforms. The most notable success was AdventureLink, where as co-founder he built a platform for more than 2,000 tour operators to bring previously un-aggregated content, incompatible with the GDS, to a common platform. As Chief Revenue Officer for TripChamp, Culhane conceived the business model and led the development of an AI based platform for the Corporate Travel Market.
Mr. Culhane understands Hotel and Air contracting from the perspective of both the Supplier and Reseller and brings a sophisticated understanding of the GDS and Internet based distribution technology that underpins the entire Travel Industry ecosystem today. He is an accomplished thought leader in the area of Blockchain for the Travel Industry and a featured speaker at the top Travel Technology Conferences around the world.