Associates

George Whitfield

Before joining forces with TEAM, George owned his own consulting company in Canada for sixteen years specialising in destination positioning, product development, branding and marketing. George's company specialised in the Caribbean basin and was responsible for "Couples" - the first all-inclusive resort; "Hedonism" - still the Caribbean's most successful resort and "The Body Holiday" - ranked number one spa destination in the world.

George's areas of special interest involve tourism strategy, destination development planning, project management, one-to-one marketing, branding and communications. His recent work has entailed helping tourist boards and hoteliers to move from traditional business practices to take advantage of the opportunities and potentials of e-business, structural change, brand strategies and the customer segment of one.

While a large portion of George's career has been spent as "hands-on" consultant, he honed his marketing and communication skills in multi-national advertising agencies on two continents advising some of the world's largest packaged goods companies. In his travel business career, George founded Canada's first discount retail travel agency, guided the efforts of the first tour operator to resume tourism to Cuba and established a company to provide the first all-inclusive soft adventure wilderness holidays in Northern Canada.

George has extensive experience in niche market segmentation, customer-centred growth and the creative interpretation of strategic intelligence. His recent work has involved the re-positioning of a progressive Caribbean country, the design and branding of four new holiday concepts for Canada's largest hospitality management corporation and the organisational re-structure and re-branding of one of the Caribbean's most successful resort hotels.

Through his career, George has focused on results. Products he developed, initiatives he designed and projects he managed have achieved firsts in the industry, set new standards of performance and dramatically improved tourism revenues. His mantra has always been to uncover what the visitor or guest really wants and to provide it in new and motivating ways. His experience at all levels of the distribution chain gives George unique qualifications for the design of innovative yet practicable solutions to a broad range of issues facing tourism enterprises.

George has an MA in Geography from Merton College, Oxford, is an Associate of The Institute of Business Advisers, is Managing Partner of his own brand consulting company, a senior consultant for the Brandtrust Consulting Group of Chicago and is an accredited consultant under the European Commission Directorate General for Economic Development.

Key areas of expertise

Tourism strategies, product development, customer needs, branding, customer relationships, communications, trend analysis, e-business strategies, international and e-marketing, the creative interpretation of strategic intelligence.

Outline Curriculum Vitae