WE CAUGHT UP WITH OUR
HEAD OF PRODUCT,
MATT LAMBERT…
With a business travel career that has taken him from the frontlines as a travel agent to the innovation of product management, Matt Lambert has had the privilege of watching an industry change in real time. His story is one defined by a passion for travel technology, beginning with the glory days of the GDS (global distribution system) and featuring chapters about NDC, smartphones, AI, and more.
In this article, we chat with Matt about his day-to-day responsibilities as a Head of Product at Gray Dawes, his first experiences as a travel agent hand-writing tickets, and a memorable trip to Miami…
A gathering of the Innovation Hub in 2023, an event that Matt Lambert helps to organize.
Hi Matt. Tell us a bit about your career as a Product Manager
I started my travel industry career many years ago as a business travel consultant in an Operation team.
It was a similar role to the ones we have now at Gray Dawes, except back then the work was predominantly GDS-based. I’d speak to clients, handwrite tickets, go out and deliver them, all that kind of stuff.
I then progressed to become the General Manager across two offices before eventually working my way up to Director of Operations. When my last company was acquired by Gray Dawes in 2019, I moved into IT team and took on the role as Product Manager.
This suited me perfectly because my last Operations Manager role was very tech-heavy – I had overseen a deal with Atriis, we were using Travelport and Travcom, and there were loads of synergies between my old and new employers. My product-related knowledge then, I think, was a really good match for Gray Dawes.
“My role as Head of Product requires me to look after a number of things. I’m in the IT team and I report to our Chief Technology Officer, Sophie Taylor.”
“Essentially I look after Gray Dawes’ existing product set, including our travel apps and software. I also spend time identifying new areas that we need to look at from a technology point of view. In other words, what’s coming up in the future? What are the other online booking tools doing? What areas do we need to create any efficiencies in?
“This involves a lot of supplier meetings and understanding what’s on their roadmaps. The key supplier for me and the business is Atriis who power our YourTrip online booking tool. I have weekly calls with the guys there to talk about what’s coming soon or log any bug fixes.
“Much of my work is identifying efficiencies, analysing market trends, understanding client requirements, seeing what’s new in the market and ensuring everything in our technology stack is better than the rest.”
where the role of ‘Product Manager’ is ranked in “best jobs” in the US, according to Glassdoor ratings
%
the avg. % of increased profit a product manager can bring to a business
%
say that product managers are seen as leaders and key differentiators inside their organisation
Statistics above taken from UXCam
Tell us about a typical day as Head of Product
My day-to-day is quite exciting now that Gray Dawes is a global business! When I first turn on my PC in the morning, the first thing I’ll do is I’ll review anything that’s gone on overnight from the US or Australia, and see if there’s anything I need to catch up on. We recently went live with our full global tech stack in Miami, so it’s all new for colleagues there and I like to keep in the loop.
Then I’ll catch up with my team. We have a weekly stand-up, but each day I’ll take the time to see what’s going on because the next day is never the same as the day before. My team falls into different sections. I’ve got application support, systems integration and technical implementation. Those 3 categories require different areas of oversight.
Application support looks after about 30 applications that Gray Dawes uses internally and externally. YourTrip is the big one, but we also oversee everything else in between, from the application that manages traveler expenses to various things that nobody has ever heard of, running in the background, keeping things ticking over.
Systems integration manages a lot of the migration and acquisition type work that we do. For example, when we acquired MP Travel in Australia, the team helped everyone to adjust to Gray Dawes systems smoothly and effectively. The technical implementation team are responsible for helping onboard new clients, building sites for them, and holding meetings to discuss our technology, how it works, and what they can do to get the most value out of it.
Once I’ve caught up with the team, I take a look at whether there are any outstanding requests from other departments that I need to move forward with. It’s an exercise in building communications internally and getting on top of what’s going on.
At Gray Dawes, things evolve at quite a pace – it’s a very agile and exciting environment – so one of my priorities is to ensure that my team isn’t slipping anywhere and that we are ready to adapt and respond to any sudden developments.
One of my other big day-to-day responsibilities is meeting with stakeholders. In a typical day I will speak to the Finance, Account Management and Sales teams to check on the progress of product related projects. At any given moment there’s probably a dozen different IT-related projects going on.
Then I get to one of my favorite parts of the day which is researching all of the cool tech stuff. This helps me to look for ways to improve things, implement feature enhancements, make efficiency improvements and all of that kind of stuff.
I speak quite a lot with our Chief Commercial Officer, Warren Dix, who knows our customers inside and out, including what they are looking for in terms of tech. He’s got a lot of knowledge around online booking tools – so he’s always giving us ideas and keeping us on the right track. Sometimes it’s tempting to focus on all of the shiny, new things on the tech market but Warren helps us to think: what do clients actually want?
What travel technology or innovations should we be looking out for?
A.I. has taken over massively in the last six months. Probably 12 to 18 months ago it was still all about NDC after 10 years, plus the usual talk surrounding online booking tools and GDS. Now we’ve fully launched head first into AI as an industry, even though we haven’t even scratched the surface as to what it can do for us.
So in both the last BTA and Advantage technology groups I attended, we discussed AI – I mean, you can’t even go to McDonalds and order some chips without AI being involved now! It’s crackers!
Every three months or so, the Advantage Group will host a showcase session. The last big one talked about AI and it was really interesting. We had a good panel of experts that hosted various discussions about it all and the conclusion was pretty much: we haven’t even come close to realizing its full potential yet and we don’t quite know how it will shape the industry in the future.
But here at Gray Dawes, we have some very exciting ideas as to how we can integrate AI alongside or ‘high touch’ personal service model. Watch this space!
What is your favourite part about your role? Do you have any career highlights?
There are so many things I love about my job.
For starters, I enjoy chairing the Advantage Technology Group. I am a massive fan of technology in all of its forms, and getting to see and talk about all of the cool and often far-fetched future tech is brilliant. The recent AI showcase, for example, was eye-opening – you have all of the chat about “the machines taking over”, but you can’t help but think “Wow, the amount of power and the level of infrastructure that these AI processes need to run is staggering”. There’s still such a long way to go.
Another of my favourite parts about my role is implementing new stuff. When we discover that we need a new supplier for something or one of the Sales or Account Management teams requires something new for a client that we get to build from scratch, it becomes the highlight of my day. Being able to develop something from the beginning, test it, roll it out, bring something new to market, watch a customer use it – it’s so cool to see.
I’m also proud of the amount of projects and global work that my team and I have done in the last couple of years. It’s phenomenal. We’ve now got a presence in the US, Australia and the Netherlands, but before that, we were already forming partnerships with companies and suppliers across the world.
For example, we successfully negotiated a partnership in Hong Kong which allowed us to implement Hong Kong Dollar content into our booking tool. Stuff like that isn’t super sexy, but getting it working still requires a tonne of work and ultimately maximises the customer experience, even if the only discernible difference to our client is that they get to buy an air ticket in Hong Kong Dollars rather than US Dollars. Solving problems to make life easier for our clients is such a buzz!
First and foremost you’ve got to love technology and you’ve got to love your industry. In terms of skills, the big one is problem-solving – you’ve got to be good at working out ways in which you can help make people’s lives better with technology.
You’ve also got to be focused on efficiency. As someone who has been in the travel management business for a while, I have seen how long things can take and the importance of streamlining processes to improve ROI cannot be underestimated.
There’s no point in bringing in new technology if it’s not going to do anything of value, even if it looks cool.
As a Product Manager in its broadest sense, you’ve got to love your products. I’m not talking about Apple or Samsung or Android, or whatever; I mean products that impact your industry. This year, I visited the Travel Technology Show and it was really interesting seeing what people were doing. If you can walk around industry shows like that for four or five hours without getting bored, then Product Management is the right place for you!
I don’t believe that formal qualifications are super important. I haven’t got a degree, but I did get a PRINCE2 Product Management qualification, which I am proud of.
The main thing I would look for in someone looking to break into product management is someone who is a good problem solver and is passionate about what they do. If you are looking to find a role within the business travel industry, it’s usually useful to have some background in the area. I’m not saying you have to be a GDS warrior like I was 20 years ago, but if you’ve worked for an online booking tool, or you had some involvement in a travel tech startup, it can be beneficial.
Finally, a few quickfire questions…
Favorite place you have visited?
The cheesy answer is Miami, but it’s true! I went out there for work (at our Gray Dawes offices there) and spent two weeks helping the US team implement our tech stack. We went up to Miami Beach for one day and the rest of the time we were literally in the office, but I loved every minute!
If we’re talking about personal trips, I’d have to say Türkiye. It’s a funny one because I never really had any interest in visiting Türkiye even though people kept badgering me, saying how great it was. So I gave in and went to Antalya and it was fabulous. I’ve been twice now and I’m going again next year.
Any interesting hobbies or interests?
No [Matt laughs]. No, I mean I play a bit of music and I have a few guitars, but I’m a 3-chord ditty kind of guy and don’t really take it seriously.
I do love going to see live bands, mainly punk rock bands. I saw NOFX in Leeds last year and it was mega because they were supported by Lagwagon and Less Than Jake who I like immensely. It was an awesome gig.
Favourite food and drink?
It’s a good question. I don’t know, to be honest! Probably steak and a diet coke.
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