UK On Tour: Manchester

Andy Clarke is a member of the Manchester Airport senior leadership team – in his role as Head of Corporate Affairs he is responsible for ensuring communications activity builds and enhances the reputation of the airport. He leads on government relations activity with a particular focus on operational resilience, crisis response and HS2/Northern Powerhouse Rail. Having recently announced the £440m next phase of the Manchester Airport Transformation Programme, his team are focused on continuing to build Manchester’s reputation as the Global Gateway in the North.

Samantha Williams is an award winning revenue specialist and currently holds the senior management position of Commercial Director at Profitroom. Before joining Profitroom she worked as a senior revenue and product manager working with a mixed portfolio of over 75 hotels and prior to this held sales and marketing manager positions for leisure resorts and hotels in the UK. Highly respected and with a strong background in hospitality, revenue management and leadership she has worked across numerous hotel marketing and management disciplines and is able to relate to the challenges that hoteliers face. 

She is passionate about helping hoteliers maximise and grow their revenue and is an advocate for personalised, automated processes and integrated systems that help to make the sales process easy for employees and more engaging for guests. At Profitroom Samantha leads on the strategic and operational activities to deliver transformative, tangible results for leisure hotels and resorts in the Africa, Europe and beyond.

Nick Brooks-Sykes is Director of Tourism at Marketing Manchester and Vice Chairman of the

Tourism Alliance.

He was educated at the University of Stirling and the Scottish Hotel School, having spent his

formative years immersed in the hospitality industry at his parent’s 52-bedroom hotel. His

early career began at Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and, as a fluent French and German

speaker, he has spent time working for tour operators in both Paris and Germany.  

Nick has over thirty years’ experience in the tourism sector, having previously held a number

of senior management roles at the North West Tourist Board and North West Regional

Development Agency. Until 2014, he was Chief Executive of Bath Tourism Plus, recognised

as one of the country’s leading destination management organisations.

Nick leads the tourism and convention team at Marketing Manchester, the agency charged

with promoting Manchester on the national and international stage and the official tourist

board for the city region.

After travelling the world whilst working as a Scuba diving instructor and English teacher George took his 1 st foray into hospitality when he owned and operated a Café and Deli in Brighton.

After just a small taste of working with the sector George was hooked. A Masters Degree and a role with benchmarking company STR gave him a great insight into the Hotel industry.

George has experience with a wide range of Hotel Technology including 2 systems so important in the Technology ecosystem; PMS and RMS.

George currently heads up the Sales team for Right Revenue, a Revenue Management system aimed at independent hotels, and famous for extolling the sentiment that

#RevenueRocks!

George is passionate about ensuring all hotels big and small have access to the technology

that can help them achieve their potential.

For over 20 years, Michael has been developing and training leaders and entrepreneurs around the world. Having resided in the UK for 16 years and presented leadership training in over 25 countries, he has a wealth of international experience and practical know-how.

Working with government departments, businesses, corporates, NPO's as well as sports teams to build leaders, strengthen companies, envision, and inspire.

Michael is an adventurer at heart, together with a small overland team he has driven in a 4x4 from London, UK to Cape Town in South Africa, climbed Kilimanjaro, and visited 66 countries.

Samantha has been with MEWS now since March of 2023. Big on the outdoors, you'll usually find her Kayaking at Loch Lomond in my spare time. Based in Dunfermline, she looks after North of England & Scotland for MEWS as a Sales Manager and has been in the hospitality sector now for 20 years