Susan is an award winning professional and key member of the team behind Liverpool’s 2008 European Capital

of Culture celebrations and the Eurovision Song Contest Visitor Experience, Liverpool 2024 – the most

successful ever staged.

Now in Strategic International Relations & Partnerships for the City, Susan is a place-making professional, who

has developed and driven destination strategy, creativity, and innovation, identifying untapped growth markets,

and securing global strategic brand partnerships to accelerate Liverpool’s destination positioning and economic

growth through the visitor economy.

Formerly an events management professional, organising events for audiences up to 300,000, Susan has over

22 years’ experience working with over two hundred high profile brands, global artists, musicians, and athletes,

forming successful commercial partnerships, and generating over £8m for public sector.

In 2017, during an overseas visit to Sweden to secure the Tall Ships Regatta for the city’s 10-year European

Capital of Culture Ceremony, Susan developed the relationship with the Grand Conseil du Vin de Bordeaux and

French Government, securing Liverpool’s place as the exclusive UK host of the Bordeaux Fete le Vin, alongside

sister cities of Bordeaux, Brussels, Quebec, and Hong Kong.

This relationship has gone from strength to strength evolving into Taste Liverpool. Drink Bordeaux, profiling the

venues and people behind the city’s hospitality sector, celebrating a sector revolution. The festival was created to

directly support the hard-hit hospitality sector in its post-pandemic recovery while supporting Bordeaux Wine

Growers to tap into new markets, discover new trade opportunities and sustain & grow export of the world’s finest

wine – Bordeaux.

Tapping into the growing trend of gastronomy tourism, Liverpool’s hospitality sector is now attracting the attention

of visitors, investors, and media, and was recently named Time Out’s 11 TH Best City in the World for food. With

support from the public and private sector.

Following Liverpool’s successful Eurovision Song Contest Host City bid, Susan was Chair and Lead of the

Eurovision Host City Visitor Experience, working together with the private sector to ensure from the moment

visitors arrive in the city, to the moment they leave, their experience was second to none. The strategic visitor

experience model developed by Susan has been heralded as a national exemplarin shaping the delivery of major

events of national and international significance, maximising social and economic impacts, perception of place,

and visitor destination sentiment.

Working with the hotels, venues, visitor attractions, transport operators, major gateways and tourism/estate

stakeholders, Susan and her team ensured visitors were immersed in an experiential Eurovision city playground.

Additionally, Susan and the team strategically supported the hospitality sector to recruit to the 2,000 + current

vacancies in preparation for Eurovision and beyond, showcasing the sector as an attractive and integral career

choice to support the growth of the visitor economy.

The visitor economy makes up almost 50% of Liverpool’s economy (47% business rates) and therefore it is

strategically, critically important to support this thriving sector, maximising the opportunity Eurovision and other

major international events present.

Inward investment is a further opportunity Susan and her team work to unlock and capitalise to re-balance the

economy, showcasing the city’s other competitive value propositions, highlighting Liverpool as a great place to

work, live, visit and study.

In line with the national shift in the Destination Management Organisation (DMO) landscape, and Visit England

(LVEP) accreditation, Susan led on business transformation in partnership with the LCR Combined Authority,

bringing all LCR local authorities together to deliver a new Tourism model, a shared single vision to grow the

visitor economy, and the implementation of a new public-private sector Board, chaired by Lord Hall, former

Director-General, BBC. The new model will formally launch in Q1 2025.