Paula Chaudron, who recently closed the door at Buro Scanbrit after almost 22 years, is going to work at Riksja Travel. Chaudron will start working at the head office in Leiden as Lead Europe on 2 April. She will further develop and expand the Europa product at Riksja Travel. ‘It just happened to cross my path. I see it as a great challenge and a great opportunity to start something completely new at my age. Moreover, Riksja Travel is a company that is developing rapidly and is at the forefront of sustainable tourism.’ Since 2002, Chaudron has worked at Buro Scanbrit (formerly Buro Scandinavia/Buro Britain) where she led the company as General Manager. In November 2022, the Stena Line Travel Group, the owner of Buro Scanbrit, bought the Scandinavia specialist (and competitor, ed.) Voigt Travel. In the position of Head of Product & Integration, Chaudron then set to work to merge the two product departments. This internal merger based on synergies, under the name Stena Line Travel Group Netherlands, has now been largely completed. ‘Gradually, it became clear that the younger generation is very well able to take over the baton. I was therefore planning to leave in the course of this year, until I came into contact with the management of Riksja,” says Chaudron. During the ANVR conference in November last year, she got into a conversation with Fenny Koppen and Yoram Samson, both CEO and co-owner of Riksja Travel. ‘There was a mutual click’, says Fenny Koppen, who has been working at Riksja Travel for more than 21 years. “At Riksja Travel, we have been wanting to expand our offer within Europe for some time, with the same type of product that we also have on our long-distance trips. So unique tours with small-scale accommodations and extras that only we have. We were latently looking for someone who could do that for us. From our first conversation with Paula, I knew that I had found the person who can further develop our Europe product. With her knowledge and experience, Paula is ideally suited to roll this out further for us.’ Riksja Travel wants to quadruple the turnover of its Europa offer in four years’ time, says Koppen.
‘That is also a manageable period for Paula before she really stops working.’ Photo: Fenny Koppen and Paula Chaudron. More backgrounds coming soon in TravMagazine.
