5 Minutes With…..Oliver Moore, Director of Travel Agency Sales - EMEA at Enterprise Holdings, winner of the ITM Chair's Award, 2023.

How does it feel to win the ITM Chair Award?
Total shock and surprise! As I have said to colleagues, in nearly 19 years with Enterprise, it was both the proudest and most humbling moment of my career.

I came back to our table at the Gala dinner, sat down next to ITM’s new Chair, Nikki Parsons and realised I was shaking for about ten minutes. The funny thing was the out-of-body experience when my name was read out. I thought, ‘That’s amazing, they just said a name that sounded a lot like mine…and then the milliseconds ticked by, and it dawned on me that it was my name!’

How did you get into business travel?
Expect the unexpected right? I’m not quite sure it was planned, like so many who come to our industry from varied backgrounds.  The graduate training programme at Enterprise really appealed to me. For me, it was the obvious and natural transition from being a tennis coach to car rental?! Joking aside, I’d been self-employed as a tennis coach and been lucky to travel the world in my early 20s with a sport that I continue to love today, so the opportunity to learn the ropes and then run your own rental branch within a couple of years had many similarities.

What do you enjoy most about your role?
As a youngster, I was that kid who exhausted my parents with ‘Yes, but why?’ to any topic and that’s been the joy of my entire career. I get a licence to be super nosey to find out how travel makes different businesses tick. It’s such a privilege to connect our mobility business with all of the other experts across the travel sector. As an industry, we are an incredibly tight-knit community and most of the time, we don’t even realise we are looking out for each other. That camaraderie gives me such a buzz.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to pursue a career in business travel?
I’d advise anyone interested in business travel to be inquisitive and adopt a questioning mindset. In my early days at Enterprise, the best advice I ever got was ‘Get to the phone first before anyone else answers it.’ This basic urgency can be applied in so many ways and it brings great job satisfaction. We don’t tend to have an instruction manual in business travel, it’s all about getting stuck in and asking your colleagues and peers for guidance. It’s what makes business travel such an amazing and supportive family.

What are you seeing as the biggest challenge in business travel over the next 12 months?
Sustainability is the biggest challenge but also an opportunity for positive change. When we talk about sustainability at Enterprise Holdings, we're really talking about the commitment to manage our business for the long term. This deep sense of stewardship plays out day to day in how we continuously strive to balance the interests of customers, employees, partners and the communities we serve. Electrification is often discussed as part of a sustainable future. Enterprise Holdings is embracing the transition to electrification and is committed to doing so in a thoughtful way, for the benefit of all stakeholders.

If you could change one single thing in business travel, what would it be?
Do I only get one? Genies give you three, don’t they?!

1. More hours in the day…
2. A magic wand that dealt with emails while you were travelling or on holiday…
3. A worldwide ban on jet lag…

What’s the favourite place you’ve travelled to and why?
Corsica. I was fortunate enough to spend a whole season on this stunning island in the Mediterranean Sea and have been back many times since. It has incredible beaches, shaded by ‘maquis’, which are wild plants and bushes that allow you to escape to some shade. Inland, the mountains rise to over 2,500 metres with jagged rocky peaks. My personal favourite is a drive up the Restonica River valley from the old capital Corte, where you can lie on sun-baked boulders as meltwater rushes down the river.  

What would be your Desert Island item?
A mask & snorkel. I was lucky enough to learn to dive on the Great Barrier Reef, so there’s nothing more relaxing than exploring a reef and inhabiting the underwater world.