Our Key People
Edwina Lonsdale
Edwina graduated from Oxford in 1981, and began her long association with the cruise industry with a job at Fred Olsen. Whilst she was involved heavily with the retail side of the business during this time, she also worked in business travel and also on the GSA side (specifically with Holland America, American Hawaii and Blue Funnel).
When she was Manager of Cruise Reservations she took her single sabbatical from the industry (and from working in London) in 1988 as Product Manager of Sovereign Holidays Worldwide, but she was lured back a year later by Paul Mundy who hired her as Sales Manager for the Royal Viking Line.
In 1990 she took responsibility for growing the nascent GSA business of Mundy Cruising, and within a short time had built it to such an extent that it accounted for nearly half the company’s revenues. So it was no surprise that when Paul decided to sell the business and retire he should turn to his long-standing number two as both natural successor and buyer.
She and her husband Matthew bought the business in 1999, and – with the exception of a rocky 2001 (as indeed had everyone in the industry) – they have managed to grow it every year since. Perhaps not so important, but nevertheless nice, their marriage (coming up to 25 years in 2008) has also survived so far.
Edwina is an active member of ACE and LCA, and also Chairman of the Exclusive Collection.
Matthew Lonsdale
Matthew also graduated from Oxford in 1981 and embarked on a career in advertising. Within seven years he was on the London board of McCann-Erickson (then, the world’s largest international ad agency) and by 1995 he had became Strategic Planning Director, the position charged with the responsibility for the quality of brand thinking at the agency. During this time he worked at a top level with a wide variety of national and international clients including Unilever, Express Newspapers, Nestle, UPS, Camel and Glenfiddich.
He left McCanns to become Executive Planning Director at Ammirati Puris Lintas – since merged with Lowes, but then also a top ten global agency. Finding he had begun to repeat himself, and apparently disenchanted with advertising, he joined Interbrand, the world’s leading brand consultancy, to run their founding identity division in 2000, where his key businesses were FIFA (including the 2002 World Cup), Astra Zeneca and Eurostar.
A mere two years later it occurred to him that he had in fact been disenchanted with corporate life per se, so he started his own brand consultancy - gospel Essential Branding – in 2002. Working exclusively with CEO’s, he acquired an impressively blue chip list of clients, including Sage, Orange, EWEA and MGR. But as Mundy grew, he realised that maybe having two companies in the family was rather excessive, and so he closed gospel in 2005 to focus exclusively on Mundy Cruising where, because Edwina does all the hard work, he can concentrate on strategic, marketing and corporate issues, and – most importantly - does not need to know anything about VAT.
Jamie Loizou
After graduating from the University of Leeds in 2001 with a BA Honours in Geography, Jamie embarked on a long desired worldwide odyssey which encompassed India, South East Asia, Australasia and South America. On his return, his appetite for travelling wasn’t quite fulfilled so he combined his first love with a career. He began working in the Product Department for mainstream tour operator Cosmos Holidays, specialising in their long haul destinations, where the opportunity to see the world and be paid to do so was a suitable compromise.
In 2004 Jamie realised his talents and interests were more closely focussed on travel and travellers than on the spreadsheets and number crunching of the mass-market tour operator. When the opportunity arose to join Mundy Cruising he leapt at the opportunity to move from the mainstream to a specialist travel organiser. Since then, his role has developed to encompass both product management and marketing, enhanced by the occasional trip away to check standards.
Jill Faulds
A member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Jill Faulds is a specialist in the travel, tourism and leisure industry sectors. Her industry experience, gained both in employment as a consultant and in-house, has included: the handling of both UK and international hotel groups - from privately-owned country house hotels and hotel marketing consortia to city centre, resort hotels and golf courses - airlines, restaurants/chefs, tour operators, river and ocean cruise lines, Crystal Cruises and SeaDream Yacht Club.
Before forming and operating her own PR consultancy, JF Associates, in 1997, Jill has worked in London and Edinburgh, with professional agencies and leading hotel companies – De Vere Hotels, Thistle Hotels, Small Luxury Hotels of the World and Grand Heritage Hotels International. Jill’s extensive and strategic experience gained over the past 25 years, combined with access to and relationships with a wide range of media contacts (trade and consumer) is an invaluable asset to clients.
