CEO Chris Meehan leaves Travel.com.au post Wotif Acquisition

Avid readers will be aware of the battle between Webjet.com.au, AOT and Wotif for ownership of Travel.com.au (operators of the Lastminute.com franchise in Australia and New Zealand). This battle had Webjet in the early lead only for Wotif to claim a late victory based on a bigger cheque book. AOT walked away smiling, with a nice little capital gain. The deal formally closed on 1 Feb - you can read the full back story here.

News has been beginning to drip out on integration plans post Wotif owning Travel.com.au and Lastminute.com.au. The latest piece is that Travel.com.au CEO Chris Meehan will be leaving the business this month. Chris was caught in a very unfortunate piece of timing. On August 30 2007 Chris was annointed as the successor CEO to Adam Johnston at Travel.com.au. Just seven days later the Webjet offer hit the news wires and the roller coast ride to Wotif ownership started. It was always going to be the case that a merged/acquired Travel.com.au was not going to need a stand alone CEO so just days after be anointed as the new boss, Chris was sitting on a job that was destined to disappear. Tough timing. Am sure after a quick break we will see Chris back in the online world quickly.