Travelport appoints Michael Buhr as CEO, Consumer and New Ventures

Travelport Limited, the parent company of the Travelport group of companies, has appointed Michael Buhr to the new position of Chief Executive Officer, Consumer and New Ventures.

 In this capacity, Buhr will lead Travelport’s strategic activities focused on identifying and exploiting new opportunities and new channels to market across the company’s entire portfolio of businesses. He will be responsible for evaluating and executing consumer and venture-related partnerships, joint ventures and acquisitions.

Most recently, Buhr was Entrepreneur in Residence at early-stage venture capital firm Shasta Ventures where he advised companies in the Shasta portfolio and evaluated prospective investments in the areas of consumer internet, online discovery and mobile. Previously, he served as CEO and general manager of StumbleUpon, a personalized online recommendation engine. Prior to StumbleUpon, Buhr was senior director of corporate strategy at eBay, Inc..

“Michael Buhr has phenomenal experience in identifying and nurturing rapid-growth, technology-enabled business ventures,” said Jeff Clarke, CEO and President, Travelport. “At Travelport, Michael’s strategic insight and expertise will help us un-lock new growth opportunities, especially as our core business-to-business products are increasingly exposed directly to the ‘end user’ consumers of travel. The opportunities to empower the consumer traveler and create business opportunities around that are huge - the convergence of travel distribution, unprecedented data access, enhanced online user experiences, and new mobile platforms are creating entire new categories. Michael will ensure that Travelport is at the forefront of this phenomenon, partnered with the right players and positioned to take rapid advantage of opportunities as they arise.”

Previously, Buhr held executive positions at Palm, co-founded VoIP (Voice over Internet) pioneer Lipstream Networks and worked in senior product marketing and management at Adobe Systems, The 3DO Company and Apple Computer. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering from Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada.

Buhr reports to both Jeff Clarke, CEO and President, Travelport and Gordon Wilson, Deputy CEO, Travelport and President and CEO, Travelport GDS and Airline IT Solutions. He is based in the San Francisco Bay area, California.

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