Sarah Howsen Email and Phone Number

I managed a grant funding project called Tourism Connect, which involved working with small rural accommodation providers within Greater Manchester to apply for grant funding to develop/improve/expand their tourism accommodation business. My role included supporting them with their application, delivery of the project and submitting their claims. I also managed Food Connect which was to promote the local food offer of Greater Manchester to visitors and working with suppliers and producers to develop contacts and networks with local buyers such as restaurants and hotels.

My role was to promote Leeds as a leisure visitor destination, and includeed the production of the annual visitor guide and seasonal campaigns. Within this role I managed the delivery of two campaigns including the use of both online and offline communications to raise the profile and awareness of Leeds as a leisure tourism destination. Alongside the leisure market I also worked on the promotion of West Yorkshire as a group travel destination and this included attending shows and exhibitions to build awareness of the area to the groups market and to generate new business leads. In order to raise awareness of the area I project managed the design and build of a new website for the West Yorkshire groups market.

Within my role of Tourism Officer I was responsible for the tourism offer within the area of Settle and developing and implementing projects to improve the tourism offer. As this is a rural area it was key that I sat on a number of local groups to ensure that I could get the local businesses support for the projects I was planning for the area. My main role was working a community group to develop and deliver a number of local events and festivals for the area of Settle. This included community engagement and helping with the marketing and promotion of the events. During this time, I was responsible for writing a bid to apply for LEADER funding for community projects in the area. The bid was for community led projects, so I held consultation meetings and organised a steering group to ensure that the bid came from the community and I acted as a facilitator for the process. I was closely involved with establishing the Three Peaks Project with the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority and I sat on the Management Board to introduce the new visitor payback scheme into the area. This included regular meetings and organising events to promote the scheme and liaise with local businesses to include them in the development of the project.

As Partnership Coordinator I managed a small team of staff to oversee the delivery of the Tourism Action Plan for the Partnership area. As Coordinator I was the representative for the area and attended regional meetings with organisations such as Yorkshire Forward, Welcome to Yorkshire and Business Link, and then reporting back to the Executive Board on a regular basis. I was Chair of the Operational Group for the Partnership and ensured that all actions were delivered efficiently by the partners of the Local Authorities. An important role was to work closely with the tourism businesses to ensure that they receive the training and services they require, as many were rural it was important that they felt included in the Partnership as well as the more urban areas. Another key role was marketing the destination both at a local and national level; I produced advertorials for various magazines and ensured the publications were distributed widely across the UK. I managed the implementation of the regional Destination Management System and the development of the website that is fed from the system. This system allows all the businesses in the Yorkshire Dales, however small, to have a regional and national web presence and allow them to develop their business effectively online. I organised the annual conference and other Partnership events, and ensuring that the Tourism Partnership was present at a number of local events throughout the year.

Within this senior position I had the responsibility for authorising compensation payments to clients and then reclaiming the compensation from the area responsible overseas. The position included close communications with the overseas managers, hoteliers and handling agents, in order to ensure the highest amount was efficiently recovered. Another major element of this role was the collection and analysis of data for the production of the monthly financial reports for the directors of the company.