Tell us a bit about your background, what were you doing prior to starting at Marketing Manchester earlier this year? 

My background is in media planning, specifically in music and broadcast media. I worked at the BBC for 15 years in the marketing and audiences department, where I ended up as the Head of Media Planning running the team there that plan owned media for every marketing campaign across TV, radio and online. There could be over 300 campaigns a year across seven TV channels, 50+ radio stations, and one of the biggest websites and streaming platforms in the country, so it was a very busy department! The BBC’s owned media inventory is worth £500m+ in commercial terms, so being responsible for the most effective use of that to make sure as many people as possible spent more time with the BBC was always an interesting challenge. 

In 2022 I decided I wanted to do something different outside of the BBC, despite my love for what they do. I’m incredibly passionate about the environment and climate change, trying to have as little impact on the climate as possible, and I wanted to do something that could help sustain our future. I left the BBC to undertake a Sustainability Masters at the University of Salford, which I completed in May 2024, before starting at Marketing Manchester as the Tourism Sustainability Manager around the same time – a bit of a career pivot, but one which I’m really glad I’ve made! 

It'd be great to hear more about your role as the new Tourism Sustainability Manager at Marketing Manchester, what it encompasses and the work you’re doing for the destination 

The Tourism Sustainability Manager role is a new role at Marketing Manchester, and it highlights how important sustainability and the environment are to the tourism and events industry. The role’s primary aim is to help tourism and business events organisations to develop, implement and promote sustainable practices in order to help Greater Manchester reach our Net Zero target by 2038, and to promote Manchester as a sustainable destination for tourists and business events. 

Alongside this, I’ll be looking at how we encourage visitors to the city and the wider region to adopt sustainable practices when they come here, from small things like using a refillable water bottle, to using active or public transport, to staying in sustainably accredited accommodation; with over 100m visitors to the Greater Manchester region each year, every decision a visitor coming here makes can help us achieve Net Zero. 

I’ll also be looking at how Marketing Manchester can be a leader in tourism and events sustainability, ensuring that all our staff are educated and aware of sustainability issues facing the industry, and that any events we attend or organise ourselves are as sustainably minded as possible. 

What are your current highlights, key priorities and goals for Marketing Manchester and the Greater Manchester region? 

This year sees our first entry to the Global Destination Sustainability (GDS) Index with the backing of Visit England, which I’m excited to see the results of in October. GDS assesses the sustainability of a destination based on four areas – environment, social, supplier, and the destination management organisation (DMO). There were 77 questions to answer, which has enabled me to assess where Greater Manchester is currently at in terms of being a sustainable destination. It’s the start of our sustainability journey and will give us vital feedback on where we’re doing good things, and where we need to improve as a city and wider region. 

On the back of this, I’ve developed a Sustainable Tourism Action Plan (STAP) which will aim to address the gaps we have in our sustainability across four areas – visitors, business and events, governance, and community. The STAP covers the next three years, and will require collaboration between many industry actors, including NGOs, governing bodies, individual businesses, hospitality associations, the local community, and many more. I’m looking forward to taking stakeholders through the plan and working with them on achieving its main aim – Manchester being the most sustainable destination in England and in the top 40 globally on the GDS Index by 2027/28. 

I’m going to be working with the convention bureau team on integrating sustainability into all aspects of attracting conferences, meetings, and events to Manchester. This work will range from improving the information on our website and in our bidding documents, to developing a legacy and impact programme so that event organisers and companies can have a lasting positive impact on the local community when they come here. I’m really enthusiastic about the social aspect of sustainability alongside the environmental and economic aspects, and I think we have a great opportunity to ensure that the brilliant events and conferences we bring to Manchester leave a positive impact on the city and region both during, and after the event. 

I’m looking forward to helping Marketing Manchester itself be more sustainable, and we’re making a great start already. All our staff have been on Carbon Literacy training recently, and we’re starting to look at more volunteering opportunities in sustainable projects across Greater Manchester. I’m working with the events team on how we can make more sustainable choices when we organise and attend events, and we’re working with the sustainability team at the Growth Company to assess our carbon footprint. It’s really important that, as a team, we think about sustainability in all aspects of the work we do at MM, and I’ve been delighted to see the team engage so readily with it – people are coming to me with ideas I hadn’t thought of! 

Tell us some more about your aspirations, and where you would like to see Manchester in the future. 

I heard a quote somewhere relating to net zero in Manchester, where the person said something along the lines of ‘if Manchester, the original industrial city can do it, then any city can’, and I think that’s really inspiring. As a city we helped to create the climate crisis the world currently finds itself in, and it’s up to us to help solve it, which I think Greater Manchester is being very proactive about. I want to see a city where it’s easy for visitors to make the most sustainable choices without too much thought, and that will require businesses and organisations to make sure they are implementing as many sustainable practices as possible. I see a future for Manchester where the vast majority of our hotel beds are accredited as green beds, where restaurants are sourcing locally and seasonally as standard, where public and active travel makes more sense than private car use. If this happens, then visitors here won’t have to think about being sustainable – just coming here, staying here, eating here will mean that they have made a sustainable choice. 

It would be brilliant if event organisers are asking us questions about what we’re doing to ensure their event can be as sustainable as possible, both environmentally and socially, and that we have a successful legacy and impact programme that is genuinely making a difference in the local community. We have the opportunity to not only be sustainable whereby we make sure we have no impact on the environment, but move towards being a regenerative industry where we actually make a positive contribution to restoring the environment. It will take a bit of time to get there, but step by step we will move towards achieving it; we can’t let perfection get in the way of progress, to paraphrase as a well-known supermarket, every little genuinely does help.