As the third quarter of 2021 comes to a close, with Hitit reaching more new countries and establishing the power of technology behind these new routes, I look forward to sharing a full 2021 wrap-up at the end of the year with even more achievements. However, for now, I am reflecting on my adventure over the years with Hitit as I have been nominated for an award as a leader in sales.
Over the past 15 years, I have worked in many different roles at Hitit, but in the light of my education and past experiences, we have focused on and done significant work to position Hitit as a world brand through corporate identity and marketing communication activities. When we look at the founding stories of the other influential industry players, it was not easy to position a modest company founded by two women entrepreneurs among the best-known players in the market. But the strength of our solutions, the agility of our technology, and our approach that prioritizes customer satisfaction above all have been the factors supporting us the most in this challenge.
We are a team, both the strength of our internal structure within the company and with our extended community of airline partners are what have brought us to where we are today. We have never used the word "customer", as we do not like the distance this word creates between the parties in the commercial relationship, and we always find it far away from our philosophy and approach. First, we created our motto "Your Team," and then we added "One Sky. One Partner." since we always identified the Hitit community as a whole, both with its employees and partners.
2020: The highest customer numbers in Hitit's history.
When I look back over the 15 years, I see that we have journeyed through demanding and enjoyable processes, but what I have experienced in the last one and half years deserves to be positioned in a different place in my professional past. Like everyone else, we have experienced immense challenges at both the individual and corporate level, but we have learned that every challenge leaves both difficult and positive marks. While feeling the importance of solidarity once again, we have witnessed how technology is an indispensable savior.
I am proud that we have hit essential milestones since I was appointed as the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at the beginning of 2018, but in 2020, we achieved "the year with the highest customer numbers in Hitit's history."
Besides sales achievements, Hitit has been actively working on marketing projects, especially social responsibility ones. Hitit works to fulfill its duty to society by replicating its contribution through technology to the social arena through the business world. Hitit organizes projects and aid campaigns in many fields and targets different audiences, working on healthy lifestyles, the environment, welfare, education, and gender equality. The most distinguished one is Rackets Up, a whole social responsibility project that Hitit manages and actively implements. Pursuant to our social responsibility perspective as a company, we prioritize children, and we want to give them access to sports. So far, with Rackets Up, we’ve introduced table tennis to about 35,000 children in Turkey.
Circumnavigating the world twice doing 83,867 km
As we leave behind the first nine months of 2021, new airlines from all over the world continue to join the Hitit community. My team and I spent time talking to airlines from all around the globe, every hour, at an incredible pace. During these last eighteen months, we took a massive world tour, while sitting in front of our computers in our modest rooms, and we went to the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Yemen, Myanmar, Egypt, Mali, Libya, Nigeria, Brunei, Romania, Eswatini, and the Cape Verde Islands. We traveled a total of 83,867 km, which means we circumnavigated the world twice. As a result, we added 13 new countries and 17 new airline partners to the Hitit community.
I want to take this opportunity to thank once again my team who have traveled this road with me. When we are recognized with rewards for our efforts, the pride, and joy we feel always motivate us to do more. Let's continue to achieve sales success with this positive spirit and motivation, and let's fly our flag all over the world!