New managing director for Telford International Centre

The managing director position is a newly created leadership role with the aim to continue to drive the venue’s success to date.

Alison has been promoted from her current role of sales and marketing director.

Tom Gray, chief executive for Southwater Event Group, said: “As we near 30 years of solid trading we recognised, with the continued emergence of new competition in the national events market, that to ensure our elite position we need to remain fit for the future.

"The aim of the new managing director role is to direct our venue development strategy and steer our experienced in-house teams to sustained success.

“Alison joined Telford International Centre in 2012 with a proven sales, marketing and venue background and, under her business development steer, has led on continued revenue and occupancy growth. A credible member of our board, she is a natural choice to work with our venue sales and operation teams to further finesse our product and service.”

Alison said: “I am thrilled and honoured to take on the role of manager director and am looking forward to expanding on the skills and knowledge I have gained in sales and marketing and applying these to the wider leadership and direction of the venue.

"Without doubt, Telford is one of the functionally most useful venue and destination campus offers in the UK, so my desire is to ensure we continually know what national event organisers seek from the venue spaces they hire and aim to meet and exceed their expectations, now and in the future.

“I take on the role from a position of strength, we benefit from high levels of repeat business and proactively create new business interest, but as a business we never wish to stand still – hence our recent investments in an adjacent multi-storey car park and an on-site hotel refurbishment programme.

"My dream is to ensure the very best of service for our clients and their guests, whilst also enabling a business tourism legacy for Telford and Shropshire, as not only is our venue commercially successful in its own right, it also creates so much more for the new town we are located in – from accommodation and leisure spend to job generation.”