Online travel and leisure retailer lastminute.com has
appointed the former managing director of Nokia UK and Ireland as
its chief operating officer, signalling its intention to
aggressively push mobile based services.The company, which announced yesterday an
operating profit of £1.6m for the three months to 30 June, is keen
to broaden its multi-channel offering and recently signed content
deals with mobile operators Orange and Vodafone.
The move to appoint Ian McCaig, who was also
vice-president of 3G operations at Nokia, reflects lastminute.com’s
long-term strategy to use interactive voice response and
location-based services technology to improve the customer
experience.
Speaking to Computer Weekly in June, Pete
Flint, head of multi-channel at lastminute.com said, “Our long-term
challenge is how we integrate the voice path with the content path.
We want to become a mobile lifestyle service, where people can, for
example, request a location-based service over the phone and get a
map on their screen immediately.”
McCaig, who has more than seven years'
experience in telecommunications, having previously worked at
Telewest, will have responsibility for operations across of the
whole lastminute.com group, including the recently acquired
holidayautos.com and travelprice.com websites.