Stephan Ekbergh
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Stephan F. Ekbergh is a maverick Swedish entrepreneur, best known for his pioneering work in the online travel industry. He is the Chief Executive Officer and owner of Travelstart, one of the biggest online travel agencies in Scandinavia that has a web-presence in 12 countries around the world. He has a reputation as an innovative mold-breaker who has a track record of challenging established ways of doing business.
[edit] Early life and career
Ekbergh was born January 25, 1960 in Malmö, Sweden. His mother was Swedish and his father a political refugee from the 1956 uprising in Hungary. Ekbergh and his three siblings grew up in Lövestad, a small village in the Swedish countryside. He cut his teeth in business at the tender age of five working weekends and holidays at a local nickel ‘n dime store run by a colourful man called Hans Hansson, a polio sufferer with two wooden legs who sold newspapers and tobacco from a kiosk and went on to built the first supermarket in Sweden. “This whole experience shaped me. I just loved commerce. Hansson was such a charmer with the customers!” Ekbergh remembers.
After completing his schooling at Osterport School in Ystad, the 18-year-old Ekbergh set up his first own business, a DJ company, renting out DJ services and equipment to nightclubs and school dances. He also started two popular rock clubs, Late Rock Café and Fuzz Bar. Alongside this, Ekbergh ran a couple of other businesses, ranging from video stores to sales of second hand clothes and used industrial equipment to the Middle East and a casino. It was here that he met another influential character, eccentric businessman Percy Neilson, who now owns one of Sweden’s biggest construction companies. “From him I learned essential business principles such as paying attention to details like signing my own cheques, not settling for anything but the best and having a loyal crew.”
Under pressure from his then girlfriend’s mother, Ekbergh in the early eighties decided to get “a real job” with Nyman & Schultz, one of the biggest travel agencies in Scandinavia. Here his mentor was Gackie Påhlsson, at the time one of Sweden’s best operations managers, who taught him all he needed to know about travel and ticketing. Holding down a day job and still working the nightclubs proved too much and Ekbergh quit after two years, but returned to travel some years later, this time working for American Express in the groups and key accounts department.
[edit] Business exploits
In 1989, Ekbergh set up his first own travel company, International Tours, which redefined sales of consolidator tickets to the travel trade in the Scandinavian market. He sold the company to a real estate group in 1993 but the new owners went bankrupt a year later. Ekbergh also founded Scandinavia’s first luxury travel company in 1991 to capitalize on the growing interest in tourism to Southern Africa as Apartheid began to crumble. In 1991 he pioneered charter travel for ethnic groups from Scandinavia to Iran.
Final call, later called Sistaminuten, was launched in 1995 to capitalize on the growing interest in accessing information via payphone numbers. It was a fully automated, telephone-based travel booking company using a tone-dialing (DTMF) menu system that was unique at the time. Ekbergh sold the company and later bought it back. In 1998 he started Sweden’s first online travel agency, the hugely successful “Mr. Jet.com”. He was fired from Mr. Jet a year later after a disagreement with new investors and with the settlement started no-frills online agency, Travelstart, in 1999. A year later he sold out to a German company for a reported $9.8m, but bought back Travelstart in 2001 after the mother firm went bust when the internet bubble burst. He remains the sole owner of the company. In 2001, he devised a seven-year business plan for Travelstart, the objectives of which he achieved in 2008 with an annual turnover of $194m and business on several continents.
Ekbergh has over the past years been active in expanding his business organically and through acquisitions. Travellab, sister company to Travelstart, is a software developer with existing businesses in Sweden. It designs a range of online B2B products marketed to the travel trade. In 2004 he also acquired Luftgrop, Scandinavia’s first travel comparison-shopping agent.
After relocating to Cape Town, South Africa in late 2004, Ekbergh formed a small design consultancy with Damian Stephens called Irrational Studios. The company was formed to oversee the re-branding of Travelstart internationally and the development of the brand in South Africa. The South African branch of Travelstart was launched in August 2006. Also in 2006, Ekbergh’s Group acquired Backpacking, Scandinavia’s online hangout for vivid travellers.
Ekbergh, his wife Annette and children Alexander (23), Hanna (12), Naomi (11) and Meleah (6) live in Cape Town, South Africa.
