It’s been an amazing six years working for Amadeus – I’ve learned a lot and had a great time in the process, but after occupying a variety of mainly airline e-commerce related roles in both Madrid and Chicago, the time has come to return to Australia and embark upon a new challenge. I have accepted a role with MasterCard based in Sydney; so new location, new employer and a new industry. I did work for Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the past and also have some payments experience from Amadeus, so the industry is maybe not completely new to me, but I’m excited by the prospect of still having so much to learn.
I first met the people from MasterCard about three years ago when Qantas chose the MasterCard Internet Gateway Service (MiGS) as part of their plans to improve direct channel payments. Now there are about twenty airlines (mainly in the Middle East and Asia Pacific region) using MiGS. At the time, I was on the Amadeus end negotiating terms for airlines using MiGS to link directly to the Amadeus Payment Server so it will be interesting to work on the other side going forward. Amongst other things, I’ll also be involved in the rapidly evolving mobile payments space, an area that I am convinced is set to really take off. MasterCard are investing heavily in this area and appear well positioned to play a major role.
Writing this blog has been an immensely satisfying experience since I started back in January 2009. Now over 2 years and 375 posts later, The Shearwater Blog is taking an extended break, possibly even permanent. I’ll keep the site up and hosted on WordPress at least until the end of the year – the reason being that search engine traffic to these pages indicates people are still interested in reading the older material, but even that traffic should drop off without new content being added. Maybe prior to the end of this year I’ll have a change of heart, but the commitment required to produce 3-5 posts every week should not be underestimated. Maybe this is why I occasionally have people telling me they want to start blogging, only to give up after a few unread posts – for the first 3 months here it sometimes seemed like the only people reading my stuff were friends and family, and not even many of them!
Earlier this year I was quite happy to reach a milestone and see that over 100 people had subscribed to this blog. For such narrowly focused subject matter this made me quite proud. I am genuinely grateful that over 100 people found my material interesting and relevant enough that they would subscribe, plus that many again visiting the site most weekdays in recent months.
Even though I will cease blogging here, I still intend to contribute occasional articles to Tnooz. Despite the growth in traffic and subscribers that The Shearwater Blog has achieved, it is dwarfed by the number of people who read anything I write for Tnooz. My job with MasterCard will be much bigger than just the travel sector (with a smaller geographic reach – A&NZ will seem small compared to my Amadeus job covering North, South and Central America), but I do enjoy writing so it will be difficult to give up completely. Given that about 25 times as many people read my stuff on Tnooz compared to the average number reading a post here, I’m sure I’ll find some way to maintain a reduced social media profile. Don’t be surprised if those pieces have a bit more of a payments focus in future.
With MasterCard I’ll be working in an office just off the right side of the picture below, so if you find yourself in Sydney for any reason and were a subscriber to this blog, I think that at least should see me paying for the first drink.
Since I started telling friends and colleagues that I was moving to Sydney I must have had close to ten people ask me to keep an eye out for them as they would also love to live and work in Australia. For everyone else (ie. those not yet sold on the benefits of Australia), I’ve added another shot just to help you understand that even for a Melbourne boy like me, Sydney really isn’t such a bad place to live and work. The MasterCard office in North Sydney is to the left of the bridge in the photo below.
To all the airline executives, industry suppliers, even competitors – in fact to anyone that was a regular reader of this blog over the past few years, I really appreciated your support; even if that support was simply showing up in my site statistics letting me know that I wasn’t writing into a vacuum. The opportunities this blog has created for me in terms of invitations to speak at conferences, meeting a wide range of new people, and probably most importantly, in clearly positioning me away from being perceived as a foot-in-the-door product salesman, have been profound. On that last point, being seen more as a consultative seller frequently being asked by airline executives to discuss not only the products I represent but the wider industry trends, sometimes other players in the industry, and then how airline direct channel sales departments need to respond to the rapidly changing online (and now mobile) environment – this has been the most satisfying outcome of the many late nights or early mornings I sat at home writing a blog post and wondering if anyone would want to read it.
I can still be contacted via this form (forwards to my personal email address), so even though I am leaving full time involvement with the travel industry, I have no intention of leaving behind the many personal and professional relationships I have build up over the last six years working with so many great people in such a dynamic space. Even though I’ll be focused on the payments industry going forward, I’m sure I’ll still find time to keep an occasional eye on innovation in the online travel sector – working for Amadeus and then writing this blog has been too much fun to forget it completely.
March 28, 2011 at 10:39 am
Just to say that as a newbie to the airline industry across the past year, your ‘on the button’ blog has taught me so much about the business, and I’ve really enjoyed your thoughts and comment – thank you Martin, best of luck back in Australia (not jealous!) Jane
March 28, 2011 at 11:11 am
Jane, very nice to hear from someone I haven’t met and whom I didn’t know was reading my work. I remember six years ago when first entering the travel sector how much industry specific information and acronyms there were to absorb in order to have a semi-decent understanding, so it is good to hear that my blog helped make some of that a little clearer.
March 28, 2011 at 11:18 am
Thanks for all you have done on the blog. You have provided a different viewpoint on the whole travel tech world from the traditional press commentators, especially as you were obviously not being sponsored by any company. I’ll miss the tri-weekly commentary
Best wishes for the role in Mastercard. It sounds like a great opportunity and there can’t be many better places to work than watching over Sydney Harbour
March 28, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Chris, I never got that many online comments here from people employed directly by airlines, even though there were many such as you who I knew were reading frequently, and that was gratifying to see.
I have to give credit to Amadeus for giving me free reign to write whatever I wanted, using only my common sense as a vetting mechanism. A lot of companies talk about wanting to embrace social media, only to go into panic mode when they realize it actually means trusting staff rather than controlling them. Amadeus may not be perfect, but at least on that issue my personal experience says they were much better than most.
March 28, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Martin. Your insightful blog has been most interesting to read and valuable in keeping up with the latest trends. Congratulations and best wishes.
March 28, 2011 at 5:59 pm
Colin, you were in the first handful of subscribers back in the very early days when it seemed like no-one was reading, and you also managed to submit some good story ideas to me over the past couple of years.
Thanks for the kind words of support – it was a pleasure writing the blog, especially when I saw people were starting to read it!
March 29, 2011 at 3:23 am
Hey Martin – terrific and terrible news all at once. I have no doubt you won’t resist more than a couple of months with a new industry to slice and dice, and I’m just looking forward to it.
March 29, 2011 at 6:16 am
Daniele, thanks for your contributions to this site over the past few months via comments plus a guest post, and I look forward to you far exceeding my rate of written output in the coming months.
March 29, 2011 at 7:01 am
Martin, I will miss your blog posts, which have been a good term of comparison with my own perspectives and also a precious source of inspiration for my speaking engagements.
All the best for the new job down under.
March 29, 2011 at 10:38 am
Great to hear from one of the early promoters of airlines taking social media seriously. Social has definitely taken off since I first heard you present on airlines and Twitter back in Budapest (or was it Miami ARAC) in the seemingly distant past.
March 29, 2011 at 11:10 am
Martin, thank you for your wonderful blog posts over the years. Being new to the airline industry around the time you started your blog, they sure gave me a lot of very useful insights. Also your dancing skills will be missed at the Amadeus conferences… .
I’m sure you’ll do a great job at Mastercard.
March 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm
The lengths I go to in order to keep a customer happy…
Thanks for reading, and also for sharing your airline experience with Twitter when you wrote a guest post a while back. I enjoyed working with you.
March 29, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Martin, thank you for all information, guidance and great post.
Thx and BRGS
March 29, 2011 at 2:03 pm
All the airline guys are coming out of the woodwork now that I’m leaving.
Tomislav, I hope you continue with the relentless enhancement of online functionality, as you were a great customer for Amadeus to have, and also a great person to have reading this blog. You clearly showed a number of other airlines that being small was no reason not to innovate online.
March 30, 2011 at 5:55 am
Hi Martin,
Thanks for all your posts over the last few years. I’ll miss your insights and commentary on the airline side digital / online / e-Commerce. I’ll keep an eye out for your posts on TNooz. Goodluck in the new role.
Matthew T.
March 30, 2011 at 10:31 am
Matt, it means a lot to get nice messages such as yours from people I don’t know personally, but who enjoyed reading my work. I had someone yesterday saying they could not see my giving up frequent blogging and predicting I’d be back in 3-6 months, but at this stage I’ll just focus on trying to learn as much about payments as I know about airline e-commerce; with the occasional Tnooz piece thrown in to keep myself somewhat “social.”
April 12, 2011 at 5:14 am
Martin, I will miss your blog posts. Not many people write on these topics with such insight.
Sebastian
April 13, 2011 at 6:20 am
Thanks for the support. I’m sure others will fill the void, but I appreciate the comment.
April 12, 2011 at 11:50 pm
Martin – congratulations on many years of a very valuable contribution to the travel tech, ancillary, air and general travel blogging scene. I have enjoyed your writing and enjoyed the chances we have had to sit together in restaurants and bars around the world. Great to have you back in Sydney and I look forward to adding another country to a list of lunch/dinner spots.
May the bow tie live forever as a travel analogy
All the best
April 13, 2011 at 6:28 am
Tim, you were actually one of the guys who, unbeknown to you at the time, actually inspired me to start writing back in early 2009. And yes, coming up with various models to try and better explain the rapid changes we were seeing in online travel is something we’ve both done a bit of over the years, so hopefully a couple of them stick.