Greg Fuller - APG South Africa Candidate to a board member position
APG Network, Colleagues and Friends As you may be aware, I have put my name forward as a candidate for election by the APG Network for the recently announced vacant Board member position. APG South Africa (S.A) originally joined the APG Network as a country member in 2000 and for the past 17 years I have been a part of this ever evolving dynamic Network. My career in the travel industry began in 1994 when I was employed as a bookkeeper in the retail travel agency division of the Holiday Holdings Group of Companies which has been widely respected as the leading, private, independently owned, multi-award winning travel services group in South Africa for the past 40 years. Three years later I was seconded to the airline GSA division where I became responsible for the airline accounting and reporting procedures, including all financial aspects for the many airline GSA clients the company represented, both in an online and offline capacity. Five years later I was appointed as General Manager of the airline services division. Certain of our online clients required us to provide them with additional sales, ticketing, reservations / general customer support services / accounting and general airport management services at each of the three international airports in S.A. This included the overseeing of all aspects relating to arrival and departure formalities, both landside and airside, all of which fell under my scope of responsibility. In 2014 I was appointed to the board of Directors of Holiday Holdings International (Pty) Ltd, the holding company of Holiday Aviation (Pty) Ltd and Aviation Promotion Group S.A and Holiday Air Charter. In 2016 the owner / CEO, Gavin Simpson, extended an opportunity for me to acquire a shareholding stake in Holiday Holdings International as part of his succession planning strategy. I am actively involved with BARSA (Board of Airline Representatives of South Africa) and the AOC (Airline Operators Committee), and I attend all the monthly meetings on behalf of our airline clients.
APG Network 66, avenue des Champs-ÉlysÊes - 75008 PARIS FRANCE Tel: + 33 1 53 77 13 19 - Fax: + 33 1 53 77 13 03 Email: contact@apg-ga.com - www.apg-ga.com
In my private capacity I also currently preside as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for a body Corporate that is responsible for 540 residential houses. Although I had already been involved in all the administration and accounting work for APG for a number of years, I was first introduced to the APG Network at the 20 th Anniversary AGM in March 2011 by my predecessor, Mike Behan, as his successor. Mike served as an APG board member for many years before retiring from Holiday Holdings. Given the fact that South Africa is the largest economy in Africa and the fact that economic conditions remain a challenge throughout Africa, it makes sound commercial sense to appoint a Board member from this region who has strong credentials and many years of general travel / airline experience. Whilst signing new airline clients should always be a priority for APG, keeping existing clients totally satisfied is equally as important. Due to the fact that African carriers in particular make up only a fraction of the total global aviation industry, we find ourselves fighting for a very small piece of a very large pie, as the legacy carriers are well entrenched in our region. I believe that we have much to learn from one another and much to share with each another in so far as it relates to how we negotiate, market, sell and distribute the various APG products at our disposal, not to mention the important need to provide value adds to our existing client network that depend on us to deliver sustainable and incremental revenue. I believe that my extensive travel accounting, administration and BSP background / operations experience, as well as my airline GSA sales & marketing experience, makes me a suitable candidate to serve on the APG Board. I thank you all for taking the time to read the above I look forward to seeing you all very soon. Kind regards.