Booking.com nabs Google exec to lead company marketing

Booking.com has recently brought on a market veteran from Google to be its new Chief Marketing Officer.

Absent a public announcement, Skift has reported that Netherlands native Arjan Dijk, most previously Google’s Vice President of Global Marketing, assumed the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Booking.com in June. Booking.com is headquartered in Amsterdam.

A blurb on a Booking.com page about its executives’ biographies states about Dijk: “A key leader of the Booking.com business, Arjan leads the company’s global marketing efforts, overseeing strategy and execution of all initiatives across the marketing funnel, including the brand, social, performance and innovation marketing tracks.”

LOTS OF GOOGLE EXPERIENCE

Dijk served as Google’s Vice President of Global Marketing for more than a decade until assuming his new position at Booking.com in June. At Booking.com, Dijk replaced Pepijn Rijvers in the CMO role. Rijvers stays on with the company as Senior Vice President of Accommodation, a position he’s held since January.

Djik takes on the CMO role at Booking.com at a key moment. The parent company is in the midst of trying to tilt its traditional search engine marketing bent toward increased emphasis on brand marketing, including TV, in a bid to attract more direct traffic, which officials have stated stands at more than 50 percent of all visitors.

At Google, according to Dijk’s Booking.com biography, he was tasked with “overall strategy and operations for Google’s marketing worldwide. His responsibilities included the marketing of Google’s suite of ads product solutions globally. Arjan also led media strategy and execution for all paid media across Google’s marketing campaigns.”

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