Richard Lovell has switched to interim executive chairman of U.K. hotel booking agency Expotel from non-executive chairman

Former Carlson Wagonlit Travel chief operating officer for EMEA and Latin America . He has assumed the new role while Expotel seeks a successor to CEO Ian Burnley, who left the company. "Ian's skill set, which is deal-making, was appropriate for working with private-equity investors, but now we are more about building and running a company, and his skill set is not so appropriate for that," Lovell said, adding that Expotel faces two major challenges: declining travel spend in the public sector, which at one stage accounted for 40 percent of the firm's revenue, and repositioning as a full-service travel management company instead of a more limited hotel booking agency.