Cendant Appoints Galeotos Galileo CEO

The second-largest global distribution system has its third chief executive in less than a year, as Cendant Corp., Galileo's parent company since October 2001, today said it named Sam Galeotos president and CEO of Galileo International.

Galeotos assumed management of global operations in addition to existing responsibilities, including Cendant's travel agency operations, hotel distribution and services businesses and strategic supplier development. Galeotos replaces Mark Miller, who in June announced his departure for Equifax in Atlanta.

According to Samuel Katz, who remains chairman and CEO of Cendant's travel distribution division and chairman of Galileo, "This is a major step forward in strengthening Cendant's competitive position by reinventing Galileo as a preferred value-added, low-cost distributor."

In an interview today with Business Travel News, Galeotos reiterated Cendant's interest in growth through acquisition--Katz's forte--its strategy of converting corporate clients to the Galileo GDS by leveraging other Cendant relationships and its work with vendors on making the GDS a lower-cost distribution channel for them. "We've spent a lot of time with suppliers over the past year and we have a very good feel for their interest," said Galeotos. "We can't ignore that we have to look at ways to streamline the business and bring cost benefits to suppliers."

Referring to Sabre's recently announced plans to cut vendors' booking fees for reservations made in GetThere (BTNOnline, July 18), Galeotos said, "We're looking at the bigger picture. I'm not sure how successful that initiative has been for Sabre. We're hearing mixed signals, quite frankly. We'll be looking at it across all the business."

Galeotos was president and CEO of Cheaptickets.com before Cendant bought the company in October, after which he was appointed CEO of strategic distribution and travel services. Cendant has since converted some of Cheaptickets' bookings to Galileo from Sabre. Previously, Galeotos was co-CEO at Worldspan, which he left in 1999.