Rentalcars.com co-founder Laurence Marlor joins Manchester startup TickX as Chairman

Event and ticket search engine TickX recently announced that Rentalcars.com co-founder Laurence Marlor has joined the Manchester-based startup as its new Chairman. Marlor will guide the company’s goal to become the global go-to destination to discover and buy entertainment tickets.

As co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer, he helped grow Rentalcars.com into the world’s leading online car rental retailer, offering cars in more than 60,000 locations, before being acquired by Booking Holdings – which also owns booking.com, agoda.com and OpenTable –  in 2010.

Following his success with Rentalcars.com, Laurence then became a Non-Executive Director at Goldcar, supporting the B2C development and contributing to its acquisition by Europcar for over £500million. He is also a Non-Executive Director at Sykes Cottages, which was acquired last week by Skyscanner and JustEat backer Vitruvian Partners.

Founded in 2015 by Steve Pearce and Sam Coley, TickX simplifies the process of finding and buying tickets by comparing over 100 ticket selling platforms, including Ticketmaster, Skiddle and Eventbrite.

Having founded and built global leaders in the travel industry, Laurence joins TickX as Chairman to guide the team to become a category leader in the trillion-pound experience economy. This services a growing trend, with 3 in 4 millennials preferring to spend money on buying experiences over things. 

Laurence Marlor, TickX, Chairman, said: “TickX represents an amazing opportunity for me to work with Steve, Sam and their very talented team to help them fulfil their vision to be the premier global platform for entertainment tickets”

Last year,  TickX received investment of £3 million from venture capital firms BGF Ventures and 24Haymarket. The TickX team has grown considerably over the past 12 months, developing market-leading aggregation technology.

TickX’s service has also expanded to offer millions of tickets to gigs, theatre, comedy, festivals, cinema and much more, giving users an unrivalled selection of experiences to discover and highlighting the best ticket options for almost anything on sale, all in one place.

The company is now poised to develop its global customer acquisition strategy. Laurence brings his vast knowledge in building world class consumer facing products to guide the TickX team through this next stage of domestic and international growth.

Steve Pearce, TickX CEO, said: “We are delighted to welcome Laurence as our new chairman. His vast experience building some of the world’s largest consumer-facing brands in the travel industry will be invaluable as we step up our international growth. The travel market shares a lot of characteristics with our industry, so Laurence’s expertise and guidance gives us a significant boost as we drive towards becoming the global go-to destination to search and book entertainment tickets.”

Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more European technology news.