Chris Gale

I originally joined Holiday Extras in September 2003 as email marketing data miner. One of the six people in the first dedicated web team, I implemented a customer email marketing strategy which created a new channel for the business - in 2003 Holiday Extras had an email database of 250,000 emails - now there's an email team looking after over five million email addresses, responsible for around 20% of our business.

I continued to work with the web team to build a firm foundation for new web platforms; flexibility of the control of our websites; and booking platforms, SEO and SEM strategies. As web development manager, I grew the web team to 80 people within two years; delivering the original building blocks for our online customer strategy. Not long after, I created a new team of seven PPC executives with the introduction of Google Adwords - and became head of web search and marketing in 2006.

In 2008, I took overall responsibility for the project management team and re-assumed the responsibility for the development team as senior head of web development and delivery. Since May 2011, I became an associate director, assisting the executive directors and CEO in driving the business forward to meet its visions and strategies. Before taking a 5 year sebatical in France from 2017 to 2022, and returning to my real true passion of helping Teams discover, learn, have no fear to try and fail to ultimately succeed in their innovations and always keep that step ahead to deliver on our mission to talk to our customer more about each and every Trip, so we can be useful every step of the way for their precious time away.

Life before Holiday Extras

I spent seven years with Eurotunnel where I worked as an IT trainer for both the UK and French sides of the business. As part of a major IT software and infrastructure migration roll-out. I becamepart of a new e-commerce team (initially made up of 10 people) set up in 2000 when Eurotunnel made major step changes in turning the business to an online ticket sales business - and became the web developer for eurotunnel.com.

Life outside of work

Chris enjoys fast cars, playing with code and keeping up-to-date with newest web technologies, with a passion for Web3.0 and blockchain technologies to help revolutionise the World.

What's your perfect hassle-free holiday?

Christmas away with my parents and sister.  Preferably somewhere warm and a bit of culture.

Insipration

Clever stuff on the web. Evolution of web technologies, scripting, radical ideas that I can make happen! I love a problem to solve.