Shangri-La Hotels And Resorts Appoints Director Of International Sales And Distribution

Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts announces today the appointment of Claudia Roth as the group’s Director of International Sales and Distribution. Based in Shangri-La’s head office in Hong Kong, Ms Roth will report to Michael Ball, Group Director of Sales and Marketing. Her role will be to maximise the group’s sales and distribution on a worldwide basis, stimulating growth in tandem with the group’s expansion, and overseeing the activities of Shangri-La’s 9 regional sales offices around the world.

Claudia joins Shangri-La from the Utell division of Pegasus, a leading provider of hotel reservation services, reservation technology systems and hotel representation, where she was Vice President Sales and Marketing, Central Europe. Her role involved close consultation with a large client base across Europe in order to streamline distribution, particularly through electronic channels, and to help hoteliers achieve optimum yield management. Claudia was instrumental in establishing yield management practices within the organisation dedicated exclusively to maximising revenue for the hotel customers base.

An economics graduate, Claudia’s marketing career so far has taken in Frankfurt, Paris and London, where she began her career with DER (Deutsches Reiseburo GmbH) in 1985. She gained considerable experience in several areas of the hospitality industry before joining Hilton International in 1993, moving to Utell/Pegasus in May 1998.

Said Michael Ball, Shangri-La’s Group Director of Sales and Marketing, “We are delighted to welcome Claudia to Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, and to Hong Kong. Her ability to manage sales activities across large geographic regions, combined with her in-depth expertise in the area of yield management, will be of significant benefit to the group as a whole in this corporate position.”

The appointment also coincides with the implementation of an aggressive expansion campaign by Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts. The group aims to double the number of hotels it operates by 2005. Although Asia remains Shangri-La’s focus, the group is also keen to have a presence in the key gateway cities of Europe and North America, as well as the Middle East, where Shangri-La has just announced two new hotels, in Oman and Dubai.

Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, the largest Asian-based luxury hotel company in the region, currently manages 37 hotels in 10 countries - China, Hong Kong SAR, Taiwan, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar and Fiji Islands, with a rooms inventory of over 19,000.