To improve its digital and customer-first strategy, The Great Rail Journeys group, which organises escorted holidays by rail worldwide, has strengthened its UK leadership team by appointing two new Commercial leaders.

Rob Payne, who has joined the company as Chief Commercial Officer, was most recently UK Managing Director of fast food company Papa Johns. He has extensive experience in the digital customer world, including with Best Western and Bupa. At The Great Rail Journeys group, Rob’s focus will be to both grow the group’s UK business as well as driving its digital change globally.

Richard Macklin joins The Great Rail Journeys group as Director of Escorted Product and Contracting. With extensive experience in the travel industry, most recently at Jet2, Richard’s focus will be to further enhance the group’s product and customer experience in its global Escorted programme.

At the recent Times Travel Awards, The Great Rail Journeys group was named ‘Best Escorted Tour Operator’.

Dave Riley (GRJ Group CEO) commented: “Rob and Rich are fantastic additions to the leadership team both bringing a customer-centric and digital-first mindset to the organisation. Our increased focus on giving customers the choice of how and what they consume is invaluable to supporting the continued growth we are seeing.”

In other appointments within the group, Neil Sabey and Paul Evans, who both joined the group earlier this year, have been appointed to new leadership roles. Neil Sabey has been promoted to Director of Cruise and Tour Management. With extensive experience in both cruise and tour management, and the group’s continued expansion and importance of its Great Rail Journeys river programme, required a more prominent leader such as Neil for that area.

Paul Evans has been promoted to Director of Go-to-Market and Change. As an operational and change leader, Paul will be invaluable as the business continues to expand through multi-source markets, and there is a more digital focus on customer’s needs and wants.

Dave Riley (GRJ Group CEO) commented: “Being able to support Neil and Paul stepping up into business-critical areas demonstrates our focus on internal development, and the strategic importance of developing both our breadth of programming in multi-source markets.”