Title
Director, Strategic Agency Relationships
Company
Arc
Bio

Colleen Hughes is the Director of Strategic Agency Relationships at ARC (Airline Reporting Corporation) in Arlington, VA.  She oversees 25 of the top 50 travel agencies in the USA, and her team oversees the remaining 10,000 ARC accredited travel agencies, cruise lines, tour operators, consolidators and such to ensure they are optimizing ARC’s offerings, have the best data possible, and is the liaison for other industry initiatives; such as EMD, NDC, or fraud.  Colleen’s passion has always been for anything travel related.  She was the Travel Manager at Mercedes-Benz, managed several agencies in California for Carlson Wagonlit Travel, sold global credit card programs for large companies at AirPlus, has done meetings’ management, and loves working with travel data tools and platforms.  It all began when she saved up her paper route money to buy her first ticket to visit her grandmother in West Palm Beach.  Her first goal was to be a travel lawyer but since reading is relaxing and heavily required in law, she felt that was not a good investment.  Then ideas as of being a flight attendant or cruise director quickly washed to sea once she worked with CWT, and Mercedes-Benz, and saw the corporate travel needs globally, and how she could help.  She’s a writer, piano player, animal lover, and enjoys meeting new people around the world.  A trivia fact:  Colleen’s family is the first to ever have 5 generations of family members attend Cornell University.  The history books were written, and her family was interviewed.  What an honor.