Tourism Australia has named Jane Whitehead as regional general manager-Americas. Whitehead is currently vice president-marketing for Qantas in North America. She started her career as a journalist at the Australian Financial Review, and in her time at Qantas was instrumental in managing strategy development as well as running the Qantas investor relations program.

Whitehead replaces Daryl Hudson, who advised the national tourism agency earlier this year that he would not renew his contract when it expired in late 2012. For Tourism Australia, the Americas region covers the United States, its fourth largest international market, in addition to Canada and the emerging South American market, including Brazil. “Whitehead’s deep understanding of the North American and Australian travel industries will be invaluable in her new role,” said Andrew McEvoy, Tourism Australia’s managing director.

Tourism Australia also has named Eva Seller as regional general manager-Continental Europe. Seller joined Tourism Australia in 1999. Katherine Droga, the current regional general manager, Continental Europe, based in Frankfurt, has returned to Tourism Australia’s corporate headquarters in Sydney to take up a new strategic role focused on revitalizing the key inbound markets of Japan and Korea. In Europe, outside of the United Kingdom, Tourism Australia focuses its activities in the primary western inbound markets of France, Germany and Italy.

 “Eva has held a number of senior roles within Tourism Australia in the distribution and consumer areas and is well known within Continental European and Australian stakeholder groups, which is a big asset,” said McEvoy. “She has a strong background in destination marketing and is fluent in German, English and French.

Finally, Maggie White has decided to finish up in her role as Tourism Australia’s regional general manager-South and South East Asia and Gulf at the end of the year in order to move back to Melbourne. Tourism Australia will begin searching for White’s replacement next week. She will remain with Tourism Australia until the end of the year to allow for a smooth handover to her successor.