A brief history about me…

March 2020 – Present Day

Business Consultant specialising in the hospitality sector, Freelance Project Management and Event Management supporting businesses & individuals.

June 2020 – Sept 2021

A local festival in between the two lockdowns. Comedy, music, food and drink over 21 nights at Chiswick House.

In just 4 weeks we organised 21 nights of events – acts included Dara Ó Briain, Russell Kane, Joel Dommett, Simon Brodkin & Tom Allen to Key Note speakers like Jeremy Vine through to amazing musicians and incredible classical performers, who’ve performed with the likes of Clean Bandit, Eminem, 50 Cent, Ed Sheeran, Bring Me The Horizon, Maren Morris, Alison Moyet, Dermot Kennedy, Rhys Lewis, Marc Almond and Tom Chaplin to name just a few.

The event was due to take place in 2021 however due to the pingdemic and the level of staffing required, we decided to postpone the event.

Check out chiswickfestival.com

Feb 2013 – Nov 2020

An obstacle course event like no other.

We organised and executed over 69 events with over 180,000 people attending. Usually attracting some 8,000 – 12,000 participants and some 3,000 spectators to each event over a weekend.

This role involved wearing many hats and learning lots! I grew a fabulous team, ran a hugely successful series of events, grew a great fan base, and more importantly, took a business to become a profitable enterprise. The hats included Marketing, Partnerships, Sales, IT and Tech, People, Infrastructure, Set Up and Derig, Stakeholder Management, website design and development, CAD, to name a few. 

However, in summer 2020, with no real light at the end of the tunnel given the circumstances with Covid, the decision was made to close the business. Fortunately we did find a buyer, and we are delighted the business has been bought and that they are going to reinstate the events.

Check out roughrunner.com

Aug 2012 – Feb 2014

Realising the marketing and promotional potential for businesses to engage with their customers via smartphone apps, I co-founded Local Marketing Apps to help local bars, restaurants, sports centres, salons and many more take a leap into mobile marketing.

The apps we have built have featured in the UK top 100 ranking charts in the app store, received hundreds of downloads to local customers’ handsets, and have allowed businesses with little or no offsite customer communication to engage with their customers in a completely new way.

Jan 2009 – Feb 2013

A consultant specialising in supporting business owners with launching their business, or growth of an existing business. Typically worked with UHNWI and specialised within hospitality, launching boutique hotels. Project management, marketing, sales and partnerships.

Jan 2009 – Jan 2011

A fun and experiential event, which brought together participants from different backgrounds and levels of experience in the web industry to think/plan/develop and launch one or multiple web apps in one weekend. It’s an entrepreneurial event designed to engage all participants while offering the opportunity to learn and meet new people.

We secured sponsorship from PayPal & were acquired by Oxygen Accelerator.

Jan 2009 – Feb 2013

Founded and organised a series of monthly events supporting those in the entrepreneurial space & running their own small businesses. A monthly conference-style event, where I brought on board 4 speakers to discuss relevant topics that would help anyone running their own business, and regular drinks receptions. I was fortunate enough to have also secured sponsorship from O2 and Dominos Pizza!

Feb 2002 – Dec 2009

Based initially the London Marriott Hotel Regents Park Marriott for just short of a year to help write, deliver & implement a Sales and Marketing Plan to help the hotel improve its financial position and to reach budget. This was successfully implemented and we won various new contracts. Particularly outstanding were 3 new airline crew contracts we won delivering significant revenue to the bottom line.

Following this, I was asked to go to the London Marriott Hotel County Hall where the business had been performing very poorly. Being the flagship Marriott in London & the UK at the time the business was then the worst performing Marriott in the UKIEMA and had seen year on year revenues simply decline.

My role was to understand, write and deliver an effective plan to turn the business around. We did a full business re-positioning on the hotel, re-wrote all the business, sales and marketing plans and implemented them. These plans moved the business around from a £12m turnover to a £19.4m turnover business in just under 3 years during the recession ended Dec 09. The Marriott County Hall also finished in Dec 2009 with the highest RevPar for every Marriott in the UK and Ireland. Thus the hotel was transformed from the worst-performing Marriott in the UK to the best performing Marriott during a recession.

Jan 1998 – Feb 2002

The Savoy Group – a collection of the finest luxury hotels in London, including The Savoy, Claridge’s, The Berkeley, The Connaught and The Lygon Arms.

Since the team was established and were responsible for existing accounts, I was brought on to look into new markets, and drive “new” sales through effective marketing, sales and negotiations to a new audience.

Establishing the roadmap of what was needed, through the writing of an effective sales and marketing plan, I drove £4m in the second year through new business & accounts.

From this point I also managed many of the top key accounts for the collection to maintain and grow business performance so as to meet budgets agreed.

Feb 1994 – Jan 1998

Responsible for the opening of the hotel, for the development of the businesses within the immediate area to include the Airport and all the airlines, encompassing negotiations of crew contracts and all the large corporate businesses around Heathrow as far as Slough’s business parks.

Highly successful opening, becoming the most successful Marriott Hotel at the time within the UKI collection and winning various accolades to include the best sales team in the UK as dictated by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, beating IBM, British Gas and Yellow Pages sales teams (no other hotel even got in!).

Before this, I was fortunate enough to have worked in Cyprus for 12 months in a luxury hotel, France and California. All in the hospitality sector where in California I was responsible for an outside catering company. We delivered high-end events to the board of directors of ARCO at their Management HQ/retreat in Santa Barbara once a month, whilst laying on many events across the state from weddings to dinner parties and cocktail receptions.