Skyscanner appoints Travix boss John Mangelaars as CEO

John Mangelaars will join Skyscanner as its new CEO, leaving Travix International after seven years heading the U.K. online travel agency group.

He replaces Moshe Rafiah, who was brought in to oversee operations following the departure of CEO Bryan Dove in June last year.

Rafiah will remain on Skyscanner's board of director as vice chairman.

Mangelaars will be joining immediately from Travix, a fellow Trip.com Group company, with his appointment being noted as a "clear cultural fit" for the Edinburgh-based business and a "proven track record of scaling e-commerce businesses."   

Prior to joining Travix in 2013, Mangelaars spent 23 years at Microsoft where he eventually climbed to the role of European vice president for advertising and online.

Mangelaars says Skyscanner has "considerable opportunity to leverage growth."

"My long-term focus will be on guiding the team in building sustainable profitability and market share."

Rafiah continued to run TravelFusion throughout his short tenure at the helm also of Skyscanner.

Rafiah's Travelfusion sold to Trip.com Group (then Ctrip) in January 2015, for a rumored $160 million. Travelfusion was one of the pioneering metasearch engines in the early-2000s, eventually shifting to a B2B model to aggregate air content for partners.

The China-based online travel giant snapped up Skyscanner some 22 months later for $1.75 billion.

Dove joined Skyscanner as chief technology officer in 2015.

His biggest mark as CEO came in November last year when the company introduced what it called a "marketplace" approach to the business.

* Check out this discussion on airline distribution from The Phocuswright Conference 2020, featuring Moshe Rafiah and executives from American Airlines, Amex GBT and Amadeus.