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Matt Halloran
Position: Managing Director Industry Experience: 17 Years Accom.Com.Au Role: Management, Sales, Promotion, Web Design, Media Liason. Contact: +61 2 9730 3766 Email: mhalloran@accomamerica.com

Matt Halloran has a career spanning 17 years in the travel & hospitality industry. He has worked with major industry players in Australia such as East-West Airlines, British Airways and Novotel Hotels, and has held senior positions at General Travel as Retail Manager, and at Abacus Distribution Systems as Head of Customer Service. For a number of years, Matt also owned and operated a small independant travel agency, Holiday Oz, which was located in the Southern suburbs of Sydney.

Matt's experience, both within and outside the travel industry, has been broad and diversified. Early on in his career - prior to travel - Matt had already developed a fairly active entrepreneurial mindset. At the age of 17, he had organised and promoted his first youth concert, and by the time he was 20, he had promoted 6 such concerts featuring well known local and international bands, and was presenting music programs on community radio in Sydney.

Around the same time, he was developing a love and talent for "Desktop Publishing", and by the late 1980's was already producing simple designs and artwork on his Apple Macintosh Plus. Of course the Mac Plus has long gone, however Matt has kept a keen interest in continually developing this skill over the years, many times being called upon to produce artwork for leaflets and promotional material which have assisted both himself and his employers in various roles he has undertaken throughout his career.

In the mid 1990's, with the infancy of the commercialisation of the internet, Matt began to experiment in web development. He produced his first site for Holiday Oz, which was one of the first Travel Agencies in Australia to link up to Sabre's "Web Reservations" online reservation product. The Holiday Oz site was actually used by Sabre at the time to demonstrate their product - in the context of a live working environment - to their potential Web Reservations customers in Australia. Today, Matt is the primary designer for the Accom America site, as well as developing a small web design business on the side.

Educationally, Matt left school in 1980 with a School Certificate. He has since undertaken many industry and external short courses to ehance his skills in selling, customer service, training, conflict resolution, supervision and management, as well as many hours of practical application in artwork and website design.

With a range of talents and abilities which in many cases have been beyond regular career roles, Matt has often found himself frustrated. "I guess you could say I am a bit of a square peg", Matt states. "I have always been a bit of a 'creative thinker', and although there have been some fantastic roles and opportunities in my career, I have often felt the need to be able to flex my creative muscles a little more."

That creative input has come together in the Accom America site, where Matt is able to combine his flair for creativity and entepreneurial skill with his experience and knowledge of the travel industry. "I guess my aim with all of the Accom.Com.Au Pty Ltd family of sites has always been to produce websites that are comprehensive in their content, and yet maintain a user friendly, and visually attractive feel" says Matt, "Sometimes it is a fine line. The web is a great resource for people, but my experience has been that many sites still seem to miss the mark and don't take make the most of the medium - or of their own potential. Hopefully I am avoiding that!"

So, is a company like Accom.Com.Au Pty Ltd the ultimate career move for Matt? "Well, I am constantly calling upon the combination of my skills and experience to continue developing our sites - both from a business management as well as a web development point of view. At the moment I am working from home and looking after a 2 year old - we have another on the way, so I am managing a business, a young family, a mortgage, 2 cars and a cat. You've got to think that surely that has to go a long way towards the brownie points needed to fulfil my creative potential?!!"

Judging by the results, it certainly seems so.

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