Sean Hough

Sean is known as “mister retail travel”, having turned around two retail travel businesses, leisure specialist Pentravel and youth specialist STA Travel, achieving high levels of service and ensuring South Africans have a choice when booking their annual holiday. Sean also led the successful launch of Investec’s new in-house leisure travel offering for high net worth banking clients, Travel by Investec. His current venture is a startup safari tour company, which is set to launch later this year.

As a business leader, Sean has real empathy for his staff and customers and focuses on creating strong teams and an almost cult like culture. During his eight years as Pentravel’s CEO, Pentravel saw profit growth of 861 percent, off a base of negative growth in 2009, and the shop network grew to over 32 shops nationwide. Travel by Investec's launch coincided with the arrival of Covid-19. TBI achieved unparalleled client satisfaction during this time, while managing to save all jobs and focus on supporting the local hospitality industry. Throughout his 30-year career in the travel industry, Sean has emphasized both employee experience and customer experience to help organizations become market leaders in the travel industry.