Nikolaos Koklonis
Nikolaos Koklonis is a Greek entrepreneur and businessman. He is most known for being the founder of AirFastTicks and YoTrip.
Career
After completing Business Administration from Athens University of Economics and Business in 2002, Koklonis worked as a risk manager at Société Générale for several years. In 2009, he had book a plane ticket to Berlin, which he founded very difficult and frustrating. On his way back to Greece from the trip, he began planning on launching an online travel agency. Soon afterwards, he founded AirFastTickets with a capital of €100,000. The company bought tickets in bulk from scheduled flights and then sold the tickets at much discounted prices. AirFastTickets partnered with Groupon, which allowed it to sell a huge quantity of tickets with low marketing costs.
The company opened its London office in 2012. Later the company opened its office in New York City. Owing to the extremely low prices the company offered for tickets, many Greek electronic travel agencies filed lawsuits against AirFastTickets for unfair competition practices. In 2013, the company was awarded the most rapidly developed SME award by the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In 2014, the company was in the news for offering Justin Bieber free tickets to travel anywhere outside the US due to Bieber's issues with the US authorities including a DUI. The company also offered free to tickets to him for as long as he stayed out of the US.
Due to an increased volume of sales and the high cost of developing a software, Koklonis defaulted on €45 million payment to IATA. In 2014, IATA closed the UK subsidiary of the company as well as the Greek office. Koklonis began discussions with IATA and said that the company would clear its payments. In September 2015, the company entered bankruptcy and was liquidated in October. In the year 2015, before going bankrupt, the company had a revenue of €150 million.
Kokolonis was featured in the 40 under 40 of Fortune Greece in 2015. In 2016, Koklonis founded YoTrip, a company that offer cheap travel products.
Koklonis was the sponsor for Brooklyn Nets in NBA for in 2013, 2014 and 2015. He threw the first pitch for Yankees in New York in 2014. Koklonis also host a weekly travel show aired on Skai TV.