ATPCO president and CEO Rolf Purzer, who has been a driving force for modernization of the 55-year-old airfare data management company, will retire at the beginning of next year, the company announced.
Purzer, who has been with ATPCO since 1996 and took over as president and CEO in 2017, will officially leave the organization in January. Alex Zoghlin, one of the founders of Orbitz, will join ATPCO on Nov. 1 as a part of an "in-depth handover" process before taking over as CEO on Jan. 1.
Among Purzer's accomplishments as CEO is the 2018 acquisition of Routehappy, the first acquisition in ATPCO's history, which earned Purzer a spot on BTN's 25 Most Influential list that year. He also led the launch of ATPCO's NDC Exchange, which provides interoperability between schema versions of the International Air Transport Association's New Distribution Capability. In addition, he has led a hiring push for new blood at ATPCO, with more than half of its current workforce having been at ATPCO for five years or fewer.
In a statement, ATPCO chair and British Airways head of product delivery and global revenue Jerry Foran said Purzer "has fundamentally shaped ATPCO into a modern industry utility whose innovation is changing flight shopping for the better."
Besides Orbitz, Zoghlin also founded G2 SwitchWorks Corp., which provided a direct connect between airlines and third-party distributors and was later acquired by Travelport. More recently, Zoghlin served as global head of data, innovation and business transformation for Hyatt Hotels Corp.