Trade-only bed bank Bedswithease has appointed Paul Riches as sales director.
Riches left Youtravel last month, where he was chief sales officer, and he also previously held the position of global sales director at Lowcostbeds.
Riches will join Bedswithease on November 14.
He said: “I’m delighted to be joining the team at such an exciting time.
The existing team at Bedswithease is headed by general manager Franco Leto.
Managing director Adam Pardini added: “I have had various discussions with Paul over the years around joining us and am delighted he has agreed to spearhead the business and drive sales forward.
“This is a perfect time for someone of Paul’s experience to come onboard, in order to now help us with our ambitious growth plans.
“There is an obvious gap in the market and we intend to exploit this and deliver what travel agents really need.
The company currently employs four destination managers, based in Europe and will be recruiting two more experienced people to the team over the next few months, in order to expand the number of directly-contracted hotels.
Riches continued: “While we have some excellent existing relationships with some key OTAs, call centres and homeworking companies, we’ve been a bit under the radar with a number of the larger agency groups, who don’t appreciate quite how big we are.