Although John Fentener van Vlissingen was born into the well-known Fentener van Vlissingen family of the Netherlands, he also made a name for himself in his own right by creating his own corporate empire. Born in 1939, Mr. van Vlissingen inherited his ancestors' talent for turning small businesses into major world-competing corporations. His family created SHV Holdings in 1896 in the Netherlands from a merger between a number of large coal trading companies. This eventually grew into one of the Netherlands' top energy/retailing/venture capital/recycling companies.

In 1975, Mr. van Vlissingen founded BCD Holdings, N.V., a market leader in the travel industry and successful niche player in financial services.

The company employs approximately 14,000 people and operates in more than 90 countries with total sales, including franchising, of U.S.$ 13 billion. It is listed as one of the top 200 of the world's largest family businesses in Family Business Magazine.

BCD Holdings is the parent company of several successful operating companies: BCD Travel (the third-largest business travel management company in the world), Park 'N Fly (off-airport parking in the U.S.A.), TRX (a leading independent provider of travel transaction processing and data integration services to the global travel industry), Airtrade (a leading Dutch leisure travel company) and Primary Capital (a U.S.-based commercial and residential real estate financing company).

With such an impressive resume, it is no surprise that Mr. van Vlissingen was named one of the top 25 most influential travel industry executives in the world by Business Travel News in 2006 (U.S.A).

John Fentener van Vlissingen is married to Marine Comtesse de Pourtalés. They have three children and nine grandchildren. He and his wife spend most of their time in Atlanta, Georgia, Zeist in the Netherlands, and Curacao on the Netherlands Antilles.

The Fentener van Vlissingens are passionate collectors of fine art. It is a BCD tradition to support a major cultural event, open to the general public, every five years, as an anniversary gift to the communities where BCD Holdings' employees work and live.