Chief Executive and Board Director, Visit Devon
As the company’s first CEO, Nicola established the official destination management organisation for Devon, promoting the county as a place for leisure and business tourism. She managed a budget of £750k, monitoring income and expenditure, ensuring income targets were met including trading and private sector revenue streams from membership and advertising activity. The role included the preparation of the three year Visit Devon business plan, financial forecasts and annual budget plan.
Highlights and achievements
- Developing corporate governance arrangements including securing a chairman and new members of the Visit Devon Board.
- Recruiting the executive team, defining effective policies and procedures.
- Launching a new destination website www.visitdevon.co.uk which increased traffic by 100% in Year 2. The site was based on a destination management system enabling members to manage their own availability.
- Launched a commercial membership scheme.
- Operationally the organisation executed effective marketing campaigns including ‘Love My Devon’ which was an X Factor style competition with a panel of judges including celebrity chef Michael Caines.
- Managed the media relations strategy securing £1.2m AVE of targeted media coverage for the county on a spend of £35k using the wonderful services of Fiona Reece Public Relations.
This was a hands-on role and other responsibilities included market research and intelligence, advertising, design and media buying, monitoring and evaluation.Nicola was an active member of the European Cities Marketing organisation.
Love My Devon