Convention Speakers
Chris Foy
CEO VisitAberdeenshire
Chris has been CEO at VisitAberdeenshire since 2017, bringing over 30 years of tourism industry experience to the role. He has previously held positions at the former London Tourist Board, London Development Agency, in the heritage attractions sector and at VisitBritain. During Chris’ time at VisitBritain, Scottish tourism was integral to his roles. As head of Visit Britain’s 2012 Games unit, Chris led the implementation of a strategy to spread the tourism benefits of the Games to the whole of the UK. After the Olympics, Chris led VisitBritain’s overseas network operations, before moving to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to work on the UK Government’s GREAT Britain campaign. When Chris isn’t working he can be found spending time with his family and enjoying the wide-open spaces and fresh air of Scotland’s North-east.
Marc started his working life in the tourism, leisure, and hospitality industry at the age of 17. He has held a variety of front-line senior management and executive positions across different sectors of the industry in various parts of the globe. This includes time spent in the US, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, South Africa, The Channel Islands, England, the Highlands of Scotland and in his home city of Glasgow where he has been settled with his family for the past 20 years.
His wealth of first-hand experience and knowledge of the industry has been gained from working for leading corporate and independent organisations, both large and small, including Gilbeys Hotels (SA), The Metropole Hotel Group, The St. Pierre Park, Sheraton Hotels and The Freedom of the Glen Hotel Group. In addition to having his own advisory consultancy, he has spent time working for leading contract and event caterers, Compass Group and Amadeus, and has held senior posts at Alton Towers and with the David Lloyd Leisure Group.
In May 2012 Marc was appointed as the first CEO of The Scottish Tourism Alliance (STA), which is acknowledged as the overarching trade body for the tourism and hospitality sector. He chaired the national Strategy Steering Group charged with developing Scotland’s national tourism strategy, Scotland Outlook 2030, which was launched on 5th March 2020 by Scotland’s First Minister at the time, Nicola Sturgeon.
He previously co-chaired the National Food Tourism Leadership Board and was Scotland’s representative on the UK Tourism Industry Council . He is currently a board member of Apprenticeship in Hospitality Scotland, Interface and an advisory board member of Springboard UK. He is also a member of Scotland’s Railway stakeholder panel.
In 2020 Marc was awarded the “Fellowship” by the Scottish Hotel industry for his outstanding contribution to the industry, and in June 2022 was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Birthday Honours for services to the Tourism Industry in Scotland. More recently, in October 2023, he received the Industry Contribution award at the 2023 Hotels of the Year Awards.
Susan Briggs
Director, The Tourism Network
With 30+ years’ tourism industry marketing experience, advising almost 10,000 businesses and destinations, Susan offers practical expertise and strategic knowhow. Susan loves to spot trends and capitalise on them, to bring about positive change (even if that sometimes means a little turbulence along the way…), and find better ways of making sure businesses and communities benefit from the visitor economy.
Kevin Millington
Director, T-Stats Solutions Limited
Kevin has over 30 years’ experience in the tourism sector, building up a strong reputation for creating tourism solutions for public and private sector organisations, having worked in over 60 countries on more that 160 projects.
Kevin started his career working for the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) assisting countries develop research and statistics departments for the measurement and tracking of their tourism sectors. Over 20 years he worked for a wide range of countries establishing visitor and business surveys, tracking visitor arrivals, trip characteristics, accommodation occupancy and other supply and demand indicators.
In 2010 he started to focus on destinations closer to home when Visit Bath engaged T-Stats to develop a tracking system for the City and wider North East Somerset area. This led to the establishment, and increasing sophistication, of the T-Stats Solutions system that is today used by several destination management organisations and councils around the UK to track their visitor economies.
Mary Harris
Director Bird Global
Mary brings with her 25 years of expertise in international branding and communications. She is a specialist in travel and place branding and marketing with skills honed at London’s leading agencies on blue chip clients. Agencies include Euro RSCG London, Ogilvy, Cheil and M&C Saatchi where she spent nine years as a Managing Director. Mary has worked extensively with international governments and quasi-governmental organisations across tourism, FDI and talent attraction. She also set up and led the specialist place marketing team Destination M&C Saatchi.
Mary’s work has included everything from developing nation brands to tourism campaigns to navigating complex and high-level stakeholder landscapes. Some stand outs include: developing a new tourism brand for the Kingdom of Bahrain; nine years working with Bahrain EDB on investment promotion; launching a tourism campaign for Oman to benefit from the Qatar World Cup; developing a new festival brand, creating an extensive culture change programme for Oman Air, and working with London and Partners to reboot international tourism post the pandemic.
The work Mary has led is multi-award winning and has been recognised at Cannes, the Kinsale Sharks, the Campaign Big Awards, the Webby Awards, The One Show Awards, the Creative Circle Awards, Precision Marketing Group Awards, The Andys, The Lovie Awards, The Influencer Marketing Awards and the British Arrow Awards. She is proud to have been invited to judge a number of awards including five years of the Lloyds National Business Awards, The City Nation Place Awards and the World Media Awards. Mary has spoken at City Nation Place and Race for Place and has been invited to speak at Arabian Travel Market and AIDCA in Nigeria.
Mary founded the HER[E] network, the place for women who put places on the map, a group to increase diversity within place marketing. She has also trained many place marketing organisations including Bahrain Economic Development Board, Bahrain Tourism and Exhibitions Authority, The Cabinet Office, The Croatian Branding Group, London Stansted Airport and Oman Air. She co-leads the City Nation Place Accelerator training programme for place marketers.
Mike Newman
Managing Director of b2me Tourism Marketing
Mike Newman is the Managing Director of b2me Tourism Marketing – a leading provider of travel trade strategy, engagement and training for the UK tourism industry.
Mike has extensive experience working with DMOs and LVEPs across England, and is the travel trade strategy consultant for the DDP Pilot in North East England.
Mike is an accomplished workshop facilitator and is UKinbound’s training partner for their Discover programme as well as providing workshops on travel trade engagement and digital transformation for destinations across the UK.
Mike also offers expertise in coach tourism infrastructure, recently completing a project with Birmingham City Council that proved transformative both for the visitor experiences that depend on coach tourism as part of their marketing mix and wider stakeholders.
Mike is a regular visitor economy conference speaker and last spoke at our Conference in 2023.
Peter Robinson
Head of Subject: Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management
Peter is Head of Subject for Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management at Leeds Beckett University. His expertise covers visitor attractions, transport operations, heritage and museums management, tourism landscapes, urban and rural regeneration and placemaking, business development and Cold War tourism. He is also an award-winning author who has published academic books and peer-reviewed journals, as well as books covering a range of transport, tourism, and landscape histories.
Peter is a Fellow of the Tourism Management Institute and the Yorkshire and Humber representative, a Fellow of the Tourism Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Travel and Tourism, and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is Co-Chair of The Association for Tourism in Higher Education (ATHE), a Director of The Institute of Travel and Tourism and represents ATHE on the Tourism Society Board. He is also Chair of The Tourism Society Consultants Network and is a member of the ABTA Tourism Skills Working Group.
He is Chair of a charity co-delivering a multi-million-pound regeneration project for the historic house and country park at Elvaston in Derbyshire. He is also the Education and Outreach Officer for The Airfield Research Group, a Trustee for his local Scout Group, and the Founding Director of The Cold War Network – a membership organisation for managers, curators, associations and researchers with publicly accessible Cold War collections and buildings.
Previously, Peter worked as Head of Marketing, Leisure, Innovation and Enterprise at the University of Wolverhampton, and also managed the institution’s Arts Council funded Arena Theatre. He was also formerly Vice-Chair of The Museum of Carpet. Before working in academia, Peter managed EU-funded projects in the Peak District and tourism projects in Oxfordshire, and spent several years working for The National Trust.
Director - Institute for Dark Tourism Research
Dr Philip Stone is founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research (iDTR). The iDTR, established in 2012, is an internationally recognised centre of excellence for dark tourism scholarship based at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), Preston, UK.
Philip has a PhD in Thanatology, which appraised mortality and dark tourism and its fundamental interrelationships with the cultural condition of contemporary society. Philip is a former tutor at the University of Cambridge. He also delivers Guest Lectures on the subject of difficult heritage and dark tourism to schools, colleges and universities across the UK, USA and continental Europe. He is also an External Examiner for numerous programmes at UK HEI’s, and a peer-reviewer for many academic journals and publishers. Philip also works on numerous collaborative research projects in dark tourism and heritage, including with partners across the UK, USA, Canada, Rwanda, Australia, China, Holland, and Ireland. He is also the UK College Partnership Lead for the School. Philip is an established Media Consultant on dark tourism. Clients include BBC TV and radio, CNN, History Television, Der Spiegel, New York Times, Huffington Post, Washington Post, The New Scientist, The Guardian, and The Conversation. He has given over 150 media interviews to local, national and international press and broadcast media. Philip has also presented at many international conferences, including delivering Conference Keynotes in the UK, USA, Taiwan, Estonia, Poland, Holland, and Germany. He has also convened and hosted over 10 national and international academic conferences at the University of Central Lancashire.
With thanks to our event speakers.