Chris DanePresident and Managing Partner, Hickory Global Partners

Chris Dane's career trajectory reads like a comprehensive history of the modern travel industry's evolution. Beginning with early positions at the predecessor to Frontier Airlines and a transformative 20-year tenure at American Airlines, Dane developed groundbreaking crisis management frameworks that would reshape industry standards. His program at American Airlines, created to handle worst-case scenario incidents with families of victims, became so influential that the FAA later required similar programs for all airlines flying in the United States. 

Since returning to Hickory Global Partners as President and Managing Partner in 2013 (after initially consulting for the company in 2005-2006), Dane has orchestrated a fundamental transformation. Under his leadership, Hickory has evolved from a traditional consortium model into a platform that eliminates the data challenges inherent in traditional consortia while providing real-time booking analytics and guaranteed ROI for partners—an unprecedented approach in the consortium space.

The scale of Hickory's operations under Dane's leadership is substantial: the company now provides access to 50,000+ hotels in over 8,000 cities across 180 countries, partnerships with 60+ global airlines, and ground transportation services in 8,000+ locations across 150 countries. 

Most recently, in 2024, he spearheaded a strategic joint venture with Advantage Travel Partnership to create "Global Stays - The Accommodation Network," combining resources to serve 1,900+ TMCs and corporate travel departments across 158 countries with a total accommodation spend of $2.9 billion annually. 

This followed the 2023 launch of the award-winning Hickory Solutions365, a 24/7 global travel support center that provides comprehensive after-hours service, business process outsourcing, staffing solutions for agencies, and complex group travel management capabilities for corporate incentive trips.