Mark Struik has been appointed as CEO at Please ask m
Mark Struik (1979) took up office as CEO of tech start-up Please ask m in January 2022. The Rotterdam-based company develops an application for the B2B hospitality industry that automatically processes hotel and meeting requests. As a result, requests and reservations are handled considerably faster and employees have more time for contact with the guests. Struik wants the start-up to grow into a market leader in the automation of the hotel and conference industry.
From 2017 to the end of 2021, Struik was commercial director at Postillion Hotels. Together with general manager Erik-Jan Ginjaar, he devised the Artificial Intelligence (AI) software 'Michiel': a virtual employee who automated the business reservation process. Michiel needed to reduce the operational pressure on employees by making the processing of business bookings more efficient. The software, now simply called 'm', was developed in-house at Postillion Hotels and was transferred to Please ask m in September 2021. As a start-up, Please ask m operates completely separately from the hotel chain. In this way, the technology is further developed in the right way and made accessible throughout the hospitality industry.
Before starting his career at Postillion Hotels, Struik held various commercial positions at Starwood Hotels & Resorts, among others. In 2014 Struik became director of sales at Postillion Hotels and in 2017 he was appointed commercial director. Together with CEO Erik-Jan Ginjaar and operational director Hans Wibbens, he has grown and repositioned Postillion Hotels.
Please ask m is a tech start-up that develops software for the corporate hospitality industry. The software, called m, aims to automate booking and reservation tasks that normally take a lot of time. The start-up is located in Rotterdam and is part of Panta Holdings.
Mark Struik is an alumnus of Stenden University of Applied Sciences – Class of 2008.