New COO Dean Moore Aims to Take Goway to the Next Level

Dean Moore wants to take a very successful Canadian travel company to exhilarating new heights. And why not? He’s done it before. 

Goway’s new chief operating officer is known as a business transformation specialist. Over the past 25 years, he led successful turnarounds with MyTravel Group PLC in the UK and here in Canada with Thomas Cook (North America). 

He did it again from 2014 to 2016 as he led itravel2000 in a re-brand from struggling vacation discounter to profitable full-service online travel agency. In just over a year, his strategies helped raise online conversions 41%, email subscribers 40% and repeat customers 17%. Flight sales leaped by 48%, cruise sales by 31% and hotel sales by 15%. At the same time, itravel2000 led the OTA industry with a 96% customer satisfaction rating.

“I ‘get’ what the ideal customer experience should be and know what operational excellence feels like,” Moore says in his LinkedIn profile. 

“I thrive on building high-performing teams and creating innovative, efficient and performance-driven cultures. That’s exactly what I did at Itravel2000 and Thomas Cook … and want to do again! There is no better feeling than setting a new strategic direction and achieving (often exceeding) that goal.”

Moore met Goway founder and president Bruce Hodge several years ago, and there was an instant connection.

“I felt some real affinity for Bruce the man, and the company Bruce built. I spoke to many people and heard nothing but good things about Goway’s leadership and ownership. In travel, that’s not too common,” Moore said in an interview with Travel Market Report Canada.

Last December, Hodge approached Moore to gauge his interest in helping take the successful business to another level. “I saw nothing but opportunity to substantially move the needle on growth,” Moore said. “But you have to have the right foundation and infrastructure to scale up.”

In his new role, that’s exactly what Moore will focus on — strengthening the leadership team and reinforcing the foundations for continued strategic growth. Hodge will remain Goway’s president, while Moore will oversee daily operations at the family-owned company.

 “I’m thrilled to welcome Dean to the Goway family,” said Hodge. “We’ve been successfully growing for 55 years, and innovation has always been core to our strategy. It’s essential that we have the infrastructure and organizational capacity to support growth and operate a diverse travel portfolio on a global scale. Dean is a passionate leader with a fire in his belly. As COO, he will forge the path for another 55 years of success.” 

Moore told Travel Market Report Canada that Goway has major strengths in its relationships with the Canadian travel trade and with DMCs around the world. It is also operating in a custom travel space that has seen tremendous growth in recent years. 

 “There’s been a huge switch towards what the media calls experiential travel and away from bucket and spade vacations. When you combine that with the massive wealth transfer from Boomers to GenX and Millennials, Goway is in a very good space,” Moore said.

Goway’s new Chief Operating Officer says the company “is still skewed to the older customer” and needs to shift its communications and engagement strategies “to connect with and engage with the a audience that has a higher propensity to spend and travel.”

That process is already underway. Last year, Goway unveiled a major rebrand as part of its 55th anniversary celebration. According to VP of Marketing Mitchell Fawcett, the new branding was designed to capture the forward-thinking spirit of Goway — honouring its five-decade-plus history while taking on new challenges.

Moore is no stranger to daunting challenges himself, and has experienced recent turnarounds in his own life. Since 2018 he has twice recovered from leukemia, the second time thanks to a “brutal” stem cell transplant. While cycling to “get fit” after that treatment, he was hit by a truck at 80 km/h, breaking his back in four places, among other injuries.

A few weeks later, when police visited his home as part of the hit-and-run investigation, an officer was astonished to see Moore on his feet. “None of the first responders gave you a chance,” he said.

“My doctors say I’m a man of steel,” Moore told TMR Canada. And steel is an appropriate metaphor for what the British-born executive is seeking to achieve at Goway. Thanks to its high load-bearing capacity, durability, and ability to withstand significant stress, steel is an excellent choice for building robust and resilient structures.