Who is Helmut?
I grew up in a small mountain town in central Austria. As beautiful as it was, I always wanted to see more of the world. My parents weren’t really into travelling—vacation for them was basically “let’s climb the next mountain.” So while others went away, I spent my time with atlases and maps and just got hungrier and hungrier to explore.
I studied business administration in Austria and then—without much of a better idea—started an ostrich farm in Portugal with a few friends. We had absolutely no idea how to raise ostriches, but we had the confidence and naivety of 24- and 25-year-olds. It was great fun for a while, but after two years I realised living in a remote Portuguese country town wasn’t really an upgrade from a tiny Austrian mountain village.
So I quit and joined Andersen Consulting (which is Accenture today). I worked for five or six years as a consultant in SAP implementations. I’ll be honest: I’m not an IT freak—I find technology useful, but I’m not passionately technical. What I did discover was that I had the social skills and enough IT understanding to move into sales and business development.
On the personal side: I met my wife during my Accenture years—she’s a much more talented IT manager than I am. We have two daughters (27 and 17), and they’re both keen travelers too. It seems they’ve inherited our passion for adventure.
How did you get into travel?
My real step into travel was through Amadeus Travel Technology. I answered a job posting from Amadeus Austria—they needed a salesperson based in Salzburg. It immediately clicked for me because it combined my IT experience with my genuine passion for travelling.
I had a couple of great years there and also spent two years in São Paulo, Brazil, working for Amadeus Latin America. Then an old friend, Martin Bachmann, visited me in São Paulo. We talked about the idea of me joining Umbrella.
At the time, Umbrella had a strong product and a small team—around 13 people, mostly tech and implementation experts—but there wasn’t really someone focused on going out and building the commercial side. After a few weeks of thinking (and it wasn’t easy leaving Brazil), I decided to move to Switzerland and help develop Umbrella Profiles (profile management) almost from scratch.
When I started, we had maybe one or two clients and something like 10,000 profiles. Today we’re working with hundreds of TMCs in more than 60 countries, with around 14 million profiles under management. That journey has been an amazing ride—together with a fantastic Umbrella team.
You are Chief Business Development Officer for the Midoco Group. What does that mean?
In simple terms: it’s business development—what most people would call sales, but not the “cold calling and knocking on doors” kind.
Our approach is to use networks and partners, and to have conversations only with potential customers who have a serious, legitimate interest in acquiring our solutions. So the job is largely about building and developing a strong network in the travel industry—connecting with people who should know what we do, and letting the market spread that message further.
Do you have any examples of your day-to-day work?
A big part of my work is travel. I spend roughly two weeks per month on the road, meeting clients, partners, and potential clients in person. Even after more than a decade of heavy business travel, I’m still not tired of it—especially because working for the Midoco Group involves global travel: Australia, Latin America, North America, across Europe, and increasingly Southern Africa.
For me, it’s where passion meets job. Meeting people in the travel industry is something I truly enjoy. And it only works because we have strong teams behind the scenes—experienced colleagues who know the products inside out, and who can functionally and operationally convince a customer that working with us is the right choice.
One important insight from these years: any partnership between companies starts with personal relationships. Implementing profile management—or changing mid-office systems—is close to “open heart surgery” for a travel agency. It requires trust. My role is to create that confidence: that this will be a real partnership, and that we’ll be there when things get difficult.
Umbrella Profiles is a profile management solution. It manages people data—traveller profiles and the many data points that come with them—so that this information is consistent, current, and usable across connected systems.
Why is it so useful for travel agencies?
From what clients tell us, there are two or three essential value points:
1) Automation and data quality
Managing people data across multiple systems is extremely time-consuming if it’s not automated. Without automation, you end up burning thousands of agent hours just keeping data in sync—and still end up with outdated information. If incorrect contact data or traveller details go into a booking, problems appear before or during the trip, and service quality suffers.
Umbrella Profiles helps automate and control that data flow so that traveller information is correct when it matters—at booking time.
2) Data protection and compliance
Having a centralised, properly governed tool helps agencies meet data protection requirements—GDPR in Europe and equivalent regulations in other regions. Corporate clients require strong assurance that employee data is handled correctly. For many TMCs, compliance and security have been major drivers for moving to Umbrella Profiles.
3) Structured data that enables scalable processes
Especially in markets like North America, profiles can contain 200–250 data points. If formats vary from profile to profile (telephone numbers, cost centres, free-text remarks, inconsistent fields), it becomes hard to use data reliably downstream. The more standardised the data, the better automation and processes work.
I’m optimistic. AI is an opportunity—especially around automation.
AI agents are already becoming real and will improve quickly. In travel agencies, I expect AI to take over more work that currently consumes time in offices. It’s very likely we’ll see AI agents acting as “users” of mid-office tools—operating at a layer above the application itself.
For Umbrella Profiles specifically, AI can help clean up and standardise profile data—especially during migrations from more unstructured profile environments into Umbrella, which requires structure. We already have semi-automatic clean-up mechanisms, but AI can turbocharge this.
I don’t see AI fully replacing humans in the near term. I see it as a powerful helper that lets teams deliver higher quality work faster.
The direction is clear: more automation, better data quality, and smarter ways to manage and standardise profile information at scale.
As profile ecosystems become more complex and connected, the value of structured, clean data grows even more—and that’s exactly where tools like Umbrella Profiles sit. With AI accelerating clean-up and standardisation, the journey is heading toward making profile management faster to implement, easier to operate, and more reliable across many integrated systems.
Security and simplicity remain key.
Finally, do you have any advice for travel agencies?
A few observations from meeting many travel agencies:
And finally: be bold and brave—but remember that execution matters. A good idea alone isn’t enough.
Maybe Jörg Hauschild — He's the COO and I'm sure he has some very, very interesting perspectives on, let's say, the art of running a software company.