A smooth landing

Assuming her private persona is like her professional self, there’ll be no unnecessary drama before Jacky Simmonds goes on holiday. She’ll have her bags packed the night before, travel clothes laid out and itinerary planned. Her hand luggage will contain enough activities and snacks to keep the children entertained on the journey. And when the taxi to the airport arrives, the family will be raring to go, rather than rushing around in a panic to charge the phone or find the passports. That’s because Simmonds, HR director for the UK and Ireland at holiday giant Tui Travel, is nothing if not systematic, organised and up for a challenge.These have proved to be useful qualities in the past couple of years. In that time, First Choice, where she was previously HR director, was nearly bought by two different companies before suddenly announcing a merger with Germany’s Tui, owner of UK holiday brand Thomson Airways, in March 2007. The merger created Tui Travel, a holiday giant with 48,000 employees worldwide. But the bulk of actual merger activity, including more than 800 redundancies, happened in the UK through the joining of First Choice and the legacy business of Thomson.