Our Team

Jerome Touze – Non-Executive Director, Tourism Leadership Forum

Jerome Touze, 36, is the Co Founder and COO of WAYN.com (Lastminute.com Group), the largest travel and lifestyle social media platform with over 23 million members worldwide and growing at over 2,500 members daily. The platform generates over 50 million visitors annually. In 2006, he led a partial sale of the business to DFJ Esprit, a Venture Capitalist firm based in Cambridge, for $11 million and attracting investment from eminent Internet Founders such as Brent Hoberman (lastminute.com), Hugo Burge (Cheapflights.co.uk), and Andy Phillips (Active Hotels). He was responsible for implementing the main revenue channels and signing key strategic partnerships with Booking.com, Google and India Today Group.

WAYN.com won UK Website of the year in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2015 and won the prestigious World Travel Award in 2013 and 2015.

Jerome has gained a lot of experience in fund raising and led a Series B capital raise with Scottish Equitable Partners in 2012 for $5 million. In September 2016, he led the sale of WAYN to the Lastminute.com Group. He was an ''Enterprising Young Brits” Finalist as Business Entrepreneur of the Year and“Young Gun” class of 2007. Jerome was also commended for Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 at the UK Technology Innovation and Growth Awards and a Finalist at the Ernst & Young London Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. Prior to founding WAYN.com, Jerome was a Senior Consultant at Accenture in London where he worked in the Communications and High Tech division for clients such as Microsoft and BT. Jerome holds a Management degree from Kedge Business School and a Business and Economics degree (BA Honors) from the University of Westminster with a major in Finance.

Miller Motola – Non-Executive, Tourism Leadership Forum

With a Bachelor of Arts in Education from the University of the North, Miller Matola began his career as a lecturer at Vista University where he worked for four years. During this time, he obtained a BA Honours (Cum Laude) from the University of Potchefstroom. Thereafter he took on a project management course whilst working as a Project Manager at Technikon in South Africa.

He was then awarded a scholarship by the United States Agency, for international development, to travel to the US amongst others as part of the USAID South Africa- Namibia Institute. Upon his return to South Africa in 1996, Miller was assigned to design a tourism course, which fuelled his interest in the tourism sector. Since then he has worked with various organizations in Executive positions in the tourism and hospitality industry, including working with the Department of Tourism, Tourism KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife KZN, Tourism Grading Council of SA, Durban Chamber of Commerce and the International Convention Center Durban, amongst others.

Miller Matola was the Chief Executive Officer of the International Marketing Council: Brand South Africa in 2010 to 2015. His passion and commitment to his work is evident in the numerous awards which he has received, such as the Kaelo-ABSA award for achievement (in 2004 and 2011), Leading Managers Awards (2009), to name a few.

Juergen Steinmetz - Affiliate Partner

Juergen Steinmetz, originally from Germany, moved to Hawaii in 1988 and has been living on Oahu’s North Shore since 1992. A travel and tourism industry veteran, Mr. Steinmetz has been in the business since 1977.

Mr. Steinmetz is also the co-founder and publisher of eTurboNews (also known as ETN), a global travel industry newswire with a circulation of over 230,000 travel and tourism professionals in more than 100 countries. Since the inception of Hawaii-based eTN in 1999, it has become one of the most formidable and influential global travel and tourism publications today. To date, eTN is the oldest Internet-based travel and tourism publication that is currently in existence.

For the last ten years, Mr. Steinmetz has represented the global travel and tourism media at the United Nations World Tourism Organization Task Group dealing with sexual exploitation of children.

He was also an industry board member of PATA (Pacific Travel Association), and chairman of the International Coalition of Tourism Partners, a global organization with tourism board members promoting Green Growth and Quality.

Currently Mr. Steinmetz is the president and CEO of eTN Corporation, the owner of eTurboNews, TravelWireNews, Meetings.travel, Aviation.travel, TravelIndustryDeals, WorldTourismWire, Suites.travel, the German language services and Duesseldorf based eTurboNews.de and also the main shareholder of New York based TravelMarketingNetwork.

Cuthbert Ncube - Non-Executive Director

Cuthbert Ncube started his career after graduating in Business Management. He became driven to be an entrepreneur that saw him pioneering Kwela Fleet Management (Kwela) that has since gone on to be a leading tourism services company. Cuthbert Ncube is the Chief Executive of Kwela Fleet Management.

In 2008 after seeing the potential growth in the tourism services sector, Kwela Europa was born in Lisbon Portugal on a co-ownership set up. He acquired Golden feathers Lodge (4 star graded) in the Western Cape Province, South Africa.

In 2013 Kwela Fleet Management was accepted as an Affiliate Member to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation which is an organ of the United Nations. In the same year of 2013 during the United Nations World Tourism Organisation General Assembly in Zambia, Mr Ncube was elected as the Regional Vice - President of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation Affiliate Members - Africa and also serves as a Board Member.

He is a Non-Executive Director and serves as a Vice-Chairperson of STEMISA as well as Sustainable Tourism Partnership Programme.

In September 2015 at the Plenary Session of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation General Assembly in Madeline Columbia, Mr Ncube was re-elected as a Regional Vice President of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation Affiliate Members unopposed.

He currently serves on numerous boards.

Tom Buncle - Affiliate Partner

Tom Buncle is Managing Director of Yellow Railroad Ltd., an international destination consultancy that helps countries, cities and regions to improve their competitiveness as tourism destinations. He has worked for clients in the UK, Europe, Africa, Middle East, North America and the Caribbean. Tom established Yellow Railroad in 2000.

Tom has over 35 years’ experience in tourism marketing, branding, development and place-shaping on four continents (UK/Europe, North America & Caribbean, Asia, Africa & Middle East). Prior to establishing Yellow Railroad Tom spent 4 years as Chief Executive of the Scottish Tourist Board (STB, now Visit Scotland). Before that, he was International Marketing Director at STB and ran British Tourist Authority (now Visit Britain) operations in Southeast Asia, Norway and California.

Tom has worked on consultancy projects in the UK, Europe, Africa, Middle East and Caribbean:

• Destination branding and marketing strategy development: Namibia, Cameroon, Kenya, Mozambique, Gabon, Rwanda, Southern Africa, Jordan, Kuwait, Tunisia, Bosnia, Serbia, Belarus, Norway, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, France;
• Destination management planning, place-shaping, tourism policy, sustainable/community-based tourism, and organisational restructuring: Dominica, Barbados, Eastern Caribbean States, Lithuania, Georgia, Iceland, England, Northern Ireland, Commonwealth Games;
• Crisis recovery: Britain after 9/11, England after Foot & Mouth Disease, UNWTO trainer.

Tom lectures at universities and business schools in the UK and Europe, and is a regular speaker at international conferences on global travel trends, place branding, and destination marketing. He also writes for academic textbooks and business publications on these subjects. He authored the definitive Handbook on Tourism Destination Branding, published in 2009 by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and European Travel Commission (ETC).

Tom has served on several boards as a non-executive director in the fields of tourism, branding, marketing, culture and the natural environment, including: the Edinburgh International Festival Council, the Cairngorm Partnership (Scotland’s second national park) and Scotland the Brand. He was an adviser to the UK Department of Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) on the European Capital of Culture 2008 award, and is a former member of Contact Singapore’s European Panel (formerly the guardian and promoter of Singapore’s international image). He is a Fellow of both the UK Tourism Society and the UK Tourism Management Institute, a member of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Panel of Experts, a member of the Experts’ Committee of the World Tourism Cities Forum (China), and a member of the Sustainable Tourism Certification Alliance (Africa).

Tom started his tourism career as a tour guide in Europe, after obtaining a degree in Law and Sociology followed by an MA in Criminology – an interest he pursued as a non-executive member of the Scottish Prison Service Risk Monitoring and Audit Committee for 10 years.

Giju Varghese - Affiliate Partner

Giju was born in Ethiopia and completed his school in Zambia. When his family moved to South Africa in 1983, Giju continued his higher education in India where he completed a bachelor’s degree in Hotel Management, from the Mangalore University, (India).

After several years of managing hotels, and establishments on similar fields, his expertise, interest and career took a focus on organizational development and turnaround. He then went on to receive an MBA (De Montfort University, UK) and continued his career focus to a broader industry base.

Giju’s technical understanding of the tourism industry has made him an authority in Public Private Partnership especially in the nature based tourism environment. His career as the head of business development with the South African National Parks for 14 years ensured the principles of responsible tourism were achieved through public-private partnerships arguably at a higher level than any other organization in the nature-based tourism field. The projects in SANParks ranged from restaurants, retail, safari lodges, hotels, the cable car in Cape Town, the Cape Point Partnership, nature based activities and the Skukuza Airport. He has made presentations on various forums including the UN - Brazil, Several UNWTO meetings in Gabon, Congo, Mozambique, Responsible Tourism – India and spoken to various delegations from all countries from all continents. He has represented SANParks at media briefings and authored a chapter in an international publication forwarded by the UNWTO.

The success of the division led to Giju playing the role of Managing Executive: Tourism Development and Marketing, where tourism operations, sales & marketing, tourism research and the loyalty program, where he was exposed and represented the organization at the MIPTECH and MINMEC meetings, and to the parliamentary portfolio committee.

Realizing the need to apply such principles to a broader base, Giju recently (August 2016) left the SA National Parks. He has started Bhoomi Yatra – a specialist Responsible Tourism Strategy Consulting organization. (Bhoomi Yatra is a Sanskrit word meaning Earth Journeys – as the focus of the company is on Responsible Travel). He advises the Mozambican Tourism organization on behalf of the World Bank where he leads a team from Ernst & Young.

Giju’s knowledge of the public sector requirements and hands on understanding of the private sector is unique where sectors and countries are collaborating towards a common goal. Giju is in a continuous quest for innovation – products, processes and people management.