Management Team
Arthur Avram, Founding Director
A fourth generation hotelier, Arthur’s professional background includes managing IT departments at prominent Melbourne hotels. Responsible for directing online marketing and distribution strategies on third-party sites, Arthur’s hotel became the biggest seller by volume of accommodation room nights on wotif.com. Online room sales for the hotel increased to 35%, more than double the industry average at that time, this in turn equated to a substantial increase in hotel profitability year-on-year.
With his knowledge of online marketing, Arthur continued to develop strategies to maximise online sales for accommodation and other hotel products. He identified inefficiency in the length of time bookers have to wait in the existing meetings industry for proposals to be submitted, costed and received. Arthur identified that a similar booking concept to accommodation was needed for meetings and conferences to ensure a more efficient booking procedure for bookers with increased sales for hotels and venues.
John Avram, Director
John has worked in the hospitality industry for the last 40 years. His experience ranges from managing small family-run hotels to being the CEO of a public corporation with $1Bil+ in hotel assets, over 40 properties, 5,500 rooms and 5,000 employees. There are few people in Australia who understand the hotel and leisure industry as intimately as John. John has worked closely with Arthur to assist in design of the Asdoo model to incorporate all of the features and facilities that meet the needs of hoteliers and the requirements of bookers. This in itself is a key competitive advantage as the Asdoo system works the way hotels actually operate and both hoteliers and bookers will be attracted to the Asdoo operating model.
Adam Johnson, Non Executive Director.
Adam is the former Managing director of travel.com.au and lastminute.com.au (TVL). Adam led the turnaround to profitability for the first time and eventual sale of ASX listed TVL to Wotif in a $60m transaction concluded in January 2008.
Prior to TVL Adam co-founded and was Managing Director of Arnold Travel Technology a corporate travel self-booking engine solution that is licensed as a white-label solution to leading travel management companies including Carlson Wagonlit and Travelscene Amex and is now the number one in its market in Australasia. Arnold was sold to TVL in December 2004.
Adam has a background in enterprise software solutions having been regional Managing Director for multinational software solution vendor Sybase, Inc. and prior to that a highly successful background in solution sales with Wang.
Elton Scott
Elton has over 13 years of experience delivering web projects specialising in online travel solutions. Elton was a foundation developer of the distressed inventory site Wotif.com and is a shareholder of DriveNow.com.au, which provides distressed inventory solutions to the car hire industry. Elton has been involved with Asdoo.com since inception and looks forward the company's future success. Elton holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science and Mathematics having graduated from the University of Queensland in 1997.
Karen has been involved in the online accommodation industry since its inception in Australia in 2000. Having worked for wotif.com as an executive team member for 5 1/2 years developing and implementing customer and supplier payments and processing strategies and procedures, Karen has since bought her significant online and start-up experience to the asdoo team. An integral member in the development of the technology, systems and processes, Karen has contributed to both front and back-end design of asdoo’s technology making asdoo’s administrative technology superior to all the current players in the accommodation market.
Kathy Avram, Customer Service Manager
Kathy has worked in the hospitality industry for more than 30 years in operational and customer service roles. In particular she has significant experience in conference and function sales and organisation of events for the CBD corporate sector. This experience has been invaluable in the specification and design of Asdoo’s intuitive meeting workflow formats to ensure simplicity, completeness and ease of use to make the online booking of meetings as simple and as close a replication of a face-to-face booking procedure as possible
Robert O’farrell
Robert is a web developer with strong interests in information systems and web systems development. Having worked in the IT industry since graduating from the University of Queensland in 2002, Robert has developed a passion for using a structured approach to systems development while utilizing the latest in web technologies. With a bachelor degree in Information Technology and a Masters in Information Systems, Robert has been building and working with web technologies for over 10 years.
David Edwards Technology Developer
Since graduating from the University of Queensland in 2004, David has been designing, building and maintaining enterprise-level web applications. During that time he has acted as lead developer on projects for clients in Australia and overseas, in a variety of industries. David takes great satisfaction in using the latest in web technologies to provide the richest possible experience for the end user.