Our Credentials
A snapshot of our work. Much of what we do is confidential — what follows is a representative view of the engagements, outcomes, and relationships behind Cileo’s advice.
Cileo isn’t built on theory. Every engagement draws on 25+ years advising the travel and transportation sector — from early-stage travel-technology ventures to publicly-traded market leaders, global payment networks, the world’s largest distribution systems, major airlines and hotel groups, and national tourism boards.
By the Numbers
25+
Years advising travel & transportation
$1B+
in commercial agreements shaped & negotiated
128
Countries where we’ve opened doors and done business
6
Regions of go-to-market experience — US, UK, EU, Middle East, LATAM, Asia
$3.5 -$150M
Company valuations scaled
Industry Research
Cileo led the 2025 Aquila Global Airline Payments Modernization Study — a comprehensive, independent read across 49 airlines worldwide on how carriers are rebuilding payments, on both the pay-in and payout sides, for the offer-and-order era.
We bring deep aviation expertise across operations, distribution, digital transformation, and commercial strategy. With unmatched strength in airline payments and finance modernization, we deliver the precision and insight aviation leaders need.
Recognized Across The Industry
Cileo’s principals are IATA Registered Agents and frequent speakers at IATA and international aviation symposium, with advisory roles across CAPA / Informa Aviation, the Ohio State University Travel Symposium, and the Airline Information Group, and membership in the WTTC and the Wings Club.
What Our Experience Covers
Cileo’s experience spans the commercial, operational and technology challenges shaping modern travel — from payments and revenue strategy to disruption recovery, loyalty and market entry. What connects it all is deep industry expertise, hands-on execution and relationships across the travel ecosystem that allow us to move from strategy to measurable commercial outcomes.
What sets us apart isn’t what we say. It’s how we show up — experienced, embedded, and accountable from the first conversation to the last.
What Makes Us Different
You will never be staffed with junior consultants learning on your dime. Every
person on your engagement brings decades of hands-on industry experience.
Senior-only team.
Embedded, not external.
When we take on a client, we are yours. We do not work with your competitors while on assignment — period. Your strategy, your data, and your trust are never compromised.
Exclusive engagements.
We don’t operate from the outside looking in. We sit with your team, learn
your culture, and work as if your business is our business — because while we’re engaged, it is.
Industry insiders.
Full lifecycle commitment.
From the first conversation to long-term advisory, we are with you at every stage. No handoffs. No gaps. No disappearing acts.
Results over reports.
We don’t dabble. Our expertise is built from years of operating inside the industries we serve — aviation, hospitality, travel technology, cruise, and beyond.
We operate as a senior-only team embedded directly within your business, not from the outside looking in. Our work is exclusive and fully aligned with your goals, never shared with competitors. With deep industry experience across aviation, hospitality, travel technology, and cruise, we stay involved at every stage of the engagement. Most importantly, we measure success by meaningful results, not the number of reports we produce.
We measure our value by what changes — not by the volume of slides we
produce. If it doesn’t move the needle, it doesn’t leave our hands.
We operate as a senior-only team embedded directly within your business, not from the outside looking in. Our work is exclusive and fully aligned with your goals, never shared with competitors. With deep industry experience across aviation, hospitality, travel technology, and cruise, we stay involved at every stage of the engagement. Most importantly, we measure success by meaningful results, not the number of reports we produce.
Airline Payments
Payments is one of the most complex — and most overlooked — levers in travel, and it’s where Cileo goes deepest. For more than a decade we’ve worked at the center of airline payments: acceptance and authorization strategy, surcharge and penalty elimination, closed-loop models, alternative and emerging payment methods, interchange and cost optimization, and the payment orchestration that modern airline retailing now demands. We’ve advised carriers, global payment networks, and technology providers alike — the rare vantage point of having sat on every side of the transaction. Where most firms treat payments as plumbing, we treat it as a commercial weapon: a source of margin, acceptance and competitive advantage rather than a cost center.
Representative work: designed a closed-loop acceptance strategy for a global payments network that eliminated surcharging and penalties across European carriers.
Payments Modernization
The way travelers pay — and the way airlines pay out — is being rebuilt. The shift to modern airline retailing, offer-and-order, and now agentic commerce is forcing carriers to modernize payment infrastructure that in many cases hasn’t changed in decades. Cileo works at the front of that shift, across both sides of the flow. On the pay-in side: the settlement and orchestration layer beneath offer and order, alternative and emerging payment methods, and the commercial case that gets modernization funded rather than deferred. And on the payout side — the half of payments most often overlooked — how airlines move money out: refunds, disbursements, supplier and partner settlement, interline, and the disruption-related compensation payouts where speed and accuracy directly shape the passenger experience. We led a 2025 global airline payments modernization study spanning 48 airlines worldwide — published as the Aquila Global Airline Payments Modernization Study. And this is live work: we are currently advising two large, publicly-traded companies on developing modern payment solutions, and advising airlines on adopting them — modernizing how carriers pay, and get paid, from both sides of the flow.
Representative work: led the 2025 Aquila Global Airline Payments Modernization Study, spanning 48 airlines worldwide.
Operations & Disruption Recovery (IROPS)
When operations break — weather, crew, aircraft, cascading delays — the cost lands on the carrier and the trust lands with the passenger. Disruption recovery is one of the largest unsolved problems in aviation, and it’s a signature area for Cileo. We’ve worked with well over 50 airlines on disruption benefits and recovery, spanning the full chain from operational decisioning to passenger re-accommodation, compensation, and the payout orchestration that settles it — the points where the experience, and the money, most often fall apart. It’s a domain few advisors understand end to end, and fewer still have hands-on depth across both the operational and commercial sides of it.
Representative work: advised carriers on disruption-benefit and recovery programs across 50+ airlines.
Loyalty & Customer Engagement
Loyalty is one of the most valuable — and most underused — assets an airline or hotel group owns. Cileo brings years of loyalty consulting to bear on program strategy, partner and coalition design, points-and-miles economics, and the personalization that turns a member file into a commercial engine. We’ve worked with both the programs and the technology providers that power them — including go-to-market strategy for those providers — which means we understand loyalty as a P&L, not just a perk.
Representative work: loyalty engagements spanning program strategy, coalition and partner design, points economics and personalization — and go-to-market strategy for the providers behind them.
Revenue Management & Commercial Strategy
Pricing and revenue are where strategy meets the P&L. Cileo works across the full span — from the revenue-management science itself (pricing, inventory, O&D and RM optimization) through to the commercial, ancillary and merchandising strategy and revenue diversification that turn it into margin. We’ve advised both the providers building revenue-management capability and the carriers deploying it, collaborating on the underlying science alongside airline teams rather than commenting from the outside — the rare firm fluent in both the math and the market.
Representative work: advised revenue-management providers and the airlines deploying them — collaborating on the pricing and RM science as well as the commercial strategy and go-to-market.
Go-to-Market & Market Entry
Entering a new market — or launching a new proposition into existing ones — is where good strategy meets hard execution, and most strategies fail at the execution end. Cileo has built and driven go-to-market strategy across the US, UK, EU, Middle East, LATAM and Asia — for global travel-technology companies with major worldwide presence and for small-to-mid-size travel providers alike: market sizing and positioning, sequencing and prioritization, pricing and packaging, regulatory and partner navigation, and the channel approach that carries a proposition to launch and well beyond it. We’ve done it for single products and for integrated, multi-product offerings spanning payments, distribution, loyalty and disruption — the harder, higher-stakes launches where several businesses have to work as one. We don’t hand over a deck and leave; we help take it to market.
Representative work: built go-to-market and market-entry strategies for global travel-technology companies and travel providers, revitalizing stalled markets and reopening dormant revenue.
Executive Access & Ecosystem Orchestration
Strategy only matters if it reaches the people who can act on it — and in an industry this fragmented, getting there is often the hardest part. This is Cileo’s signature strength. Over 25 years we’ve convened hundreds of C-suite meetings across 128 countries, and built and kept relationships across the executive suites of 120+ airlines, 20+ hotel groups, every major GDS, OTA and technology supplier, and government and tourism bodies — the kind of access that takes decades to earn and can’t be manufactured on demand. Just as important is the orchestration: convening carriers, networks, distributors, technology providers and investors around a single proposition and making them move together. It’s the one thing a generalist firm cannot replicate, and it’s frequently what turns a good strategy into signed business.
Representative work: secured 48+ C-suite airline meetings for a commercial team in a single engagement.
Technology Delivery, Cloud & Digital Transformation
Behind Cileo’s travel-industry advisory sits two-plus decades of running the technology and delivery side of the business — not just advising on it. We’ve led global P&Ls for application development, cloud, data and analytics, and automation, and built the go-to-market motions that took those solutions from pitch to signed, scaled engagements across travel, transportation, and hospitality. That includes standing up a new digital-innovation function inside a hyperscaler, growing a technology practice to $200M+ in revenue within 13 months, and leading global sales organizations focused on industry-specific solutions. We know what it takes to sell, deliver, and scale technology — because we’ve run that business, not just consulted on it.
Representative work: Helped grow a cloud and digital-innovation practice to $200M+ in revenue within 13 months and founded a cross-industry innovation network to open new buying centers.
P&L Leadership & Operational Turnaround
Advice lands differently when it comes from someone who has owned the P&L — and owned it in travel. Cileo’s principals have run a $700M travel-retail business end to end as COO, with full accountability for revenue, margin, and delivery across an airport and travel-retail footprint. An overhaul of inventory management freed $30M in working capital and drove 47% revenue growth. We bring that operator’s lens — margin discipline, working-capital impact, execution risk — into every strategy we build, rather than handing over a plan and walking away.
Representative work: Helped grow a $700M travel-retail business, freed $30M in working capital through an inventory-management overhaul and drove 47% revenue growth.
Asia-Pacific & Emerging Market Expansion
Go-to-market strategy is one thing on a slide and another thing on the ground in a market you don’t yet control. Cileo’s principals have built that ground-level experience directly — leading transportation-industry growth across Asia Pacific and Japan from $5M to $141M in annual revenue, more than doubling market growth rates, and running country operations as General Manager in Taiwan, where local wins and a rebuilt, entrepreneurial culture turned around a struggling market. That’s expansion experience earned market by market, not assembled from a distance.
Representative work: Helped grow a transportation-industry business across Asia Pacific and Japan from $5M to $141M in annual revenue, and led a country turnaround as General Manager.