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Culture Trip, the fast-growing global start up today announced that it was being joined by industry luminary Andy Washington to drive the launch of its new online travel booking division.

Andy joins a roster of recent senior hires which Culture Trip confirmed in April as it announced $80 million in Series B funding to aggressively grow the business across all areas, alongside a company re-brand.

Andy Washington has extensive experience of online travel retailing including most recently as CEO B2C Europe, dnata and MD Expedia Northern Europe (including UK) & ebookers, EMEA. He has also previously worked for Cosmos, Lastminute.com, Thomas Cook and the Emirates Group.

He starts this new role as SVP Travel today and will report directly to Culture Trip’s recently appointed COO Jeff Szczepanski; formerly COO of Stack Overflow and co-founder of Allworx.

Leading a talented and growing team including travel sales directors Sabina Shaida and James Williams, Andy will develop Culture Trip’s future online travel booking division. Leveraging the award winning content which it produces across its successful website and app, the company will connect hand-picked boutique and lifestyle hotels, independent hotels, hostels and experience providers with its rapidly rising millennial following.

Culture Trip uses creativity and technology to inspire and enable people to explore culture around the world. The company’s vision is to bring the world to everyone and in doing so bring us all closer together.

Attracting nearly 20 million monthly unique visitors to its website every month, it also has a social media following exceeding 6 million. Its video content has generated nearly 2 billion views, its app has been downloaded more than 1 million times and it has a fastly growing newsletter following.

Andy Washington said: “Culture Trip’s inspirational content has location at its heart, the local knowledge of its global network of contributors’ means it can uniquely get under the skin of a place and tap into the zeitgeist for truly authentic experiences. The scale and engagement of its existing audience means it offers an enviable connection to hard-to-reach discerning millennials and I believe it will be a game changer in the travel industry for hotels and tourist boards looking to acquire and motivate new visitors.”

Dr Kris Naudts, Culture Trip’s Founder and CEO said: “We’re building a leading, global consumer brand that will disrupt the travel industry through creative content and technology. As we continue to grow,  I’m looking to bring together leading minds from tech and travel to pioneer and innovate and Andy’s extensive travel experience and insight will be a key driver in that.”

Jeff Szczepanski Culture Trip COO added: “We’re bringing in key talent with the best experience in the world to help us fuel innovation, drive further audience growth and roll out future monetisation strategies. That investment in quality service and people means we are looking to our next stage of hyper growth,  growing both our audiences and industry partners.”