Industry heavyweight joins entertainment platform to drive global growth

From left: Sam Coley, Laurence Marlor, Steve Pearce

TickX, the Manchester-based search engine and discovery platform for events, attractions and cinema, has announced a new chairman.

Laurence Marlor, co-founder of Rentalcars.com, has been appointed to guide international growth for the firm which aims to become the global go-to destination to discover and buy entertainment tickets.

As co-founder and chief marketing officer Mr Marlor helped grow Rentalcars.com into the world’s leading online car rental retailer, offering cars in more than 60,000 locations, before being acquired by Booking Holdings – which also owns booking.com, agoda.com and OpenTable – in 2010.

Following his success with Rentalcars.com, he then became a non-executive director at Goldcar, supporting the B2C development and contributing to its acquisition by Europcar for more than £500m.

He is also a non-executive director at Sykes Cottages, which was acquired last week by Skyscanner and JustEat backer Vitruvian Partners.

Founded in 2015 by Steve Pearce and Sam Coley, TickX simplifies the process of finding and buying tickets by comparing more than 100 ticket selling platforms, including Ticketmaster, Skiddle and Eventbrite.

Having founded and built global leaders in the travel industry, Laurence Marlor joins TickX as chairman to guide the team to become a category leader in the trillion-pound experience economy.

This services a growing trend, with three in four millennials preferring to spend money on buying experiences, over things.

Mr Marlor said: “TickX represents an amazing opportunity for me to work with Steve, Sam and their very talented team to help them fulfil their vision to be the premier global platform for entertainment tickets.”

Last year TickX received investment of £3m from venture capital firms BGF Ventures and 24Haymarket.

The TickX team has grown considerably over the past 12 months, developing market-leading aggregation technology.

TickX’s service has also expanded to offer millions of tickets to gigs, theatre, comedy, festivals, cinema and much more, giving users an unrivalled selection of experiences to discover and highlighting the best ticket options for almost anything on sale, all in one place.

Laurence Marlor

The company says it is now poised to develop its global customer acquisition strategy. Mr Marlor brings his vast knowledge in building world class consumer-facing products to guide the TickX team through this next stage of domestic and international growth.

Steve Pearce, TickX chief executive, said: “We are delighted to welcome Laurence as our new chairman.

“His vast experience building some of the world’s largest consumer-facing brands in the travel industry will be invaluable as we step up our international growth.

“The travel market shares a lot of characteristics with our industry, so Laurence’s expertise and guidance gives us a significant boost as we drive towards becoming the global go-to destination to search and book entertainment tickets.”

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