Travel Rockstar - Martjin van der Voort
The Travel Rockstars Podcast
In this episode of the Travel Rockstar series, host Magnus Kunhardt talks to travel technology consultant Martijn van der Voort, whose path into the industry started almost by accident — a call centre job at Malev Hungarian Airlines, taken out of financial necessity after moving to Liverpool at 30. From there it was a fast climb through reservations, customer feedback and travel IT at CWT, a route Martijn traces back to jobs as varied as glass cutting and exhibition-stand building. He talks candidly about what keeps him in the industry — the people, and their refusal to let the status quo win — and about the family members and one unlikely music-industry connector who shaped how he thinks about resilience and purpose. The heart of the conversation lands on the pandemic, when he stepped up to lead a five-person team through the industry's toughest stretch, and on his belief that the smartphone, not the GDS, is travel technology's biggest achievement of the millennium. He's outspoken about agentic AI: convinced it will finally break travel's habit of thinking it "owns" the customer, but equally convinced most companies are automating broken processes rather than redesigning them. The episode closes with a lightning round covering Total Recall, a 17,000-record vinyl collection, a retirement plan in Luxor, and a nomination for the next Travel Rockstar: Bex Deadman of the Travel Risk Academy.
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