In News

After roles at London Transport, the Office for National Statistics and Department for Transport, David moved into tourism in 2003 as Head of Research and Evaluation at Visit Britain. Here he transformed the research function into an industry-facing activity - helping audiences understand not just what was happening in the market, but also why, supported by new outputs such as the monthly Foresight, and the overseas Market Profiles.

A thread running through David’s career can be traced back to his first role after graduating from Manchester University with a BA (Hons) in Economics – this thread is his ability to unearth the stories that datasets invariably hold within.

This first role was at what was then London Transport, where David helped the organisation to gain a better understanding of the drivers of Bus and Underground demand.

After brief spells at both the Office for National Statistics and Department for Transport he was fortunate enough to land a prime role at VisitBritain in 2003, just after the merger of the British Tourist Authority and English Tourism Council. 

This role soon evolved from Tourism Trends Manager into Head of Research, with ‘Evaluation’ being bolted on for good measure a year or two later.

David transformed the role into one which was much more industry-facing, willing to interpret, rather than just relay numbers to stakeholders, and introducing a raft of go-to outputs such as the monthly Foresight, fortnightly Tourism Trends tomes and a suite of Market Profiles describing Britain’s many inbound source markets.

During this period of his career he was regularly invited to address audiences at leading tourism sector events such as the Tourism Society’s annual Prospects gathering, the VAC Conference and TMI Convention, typically to take delegates through the latest tourism trend data in a way that would help them get to grips with what was happening, but also what might be driving these trends. 

Then in 2015 an opportunity arose to develop tools that the newly formed Visit Jersey could deploy to help the tourist board make decisions from a more comprehensive evidence base.  This included introducing an Exit Survey measuring the volume, value and characteristics of visits to the island, commissioning bespoke research to determine potential customer types, a forensic examination of aviation data to identify best prospect air routes, and building a framework that enables the organisation to describe the outcomes that flow from its interventions. 

While independent agencies would typically undertake fieldwork, Visit Jersey used David’s expertise to conduct in-house analysis, interpretation and reporting of the findings.   

David is not one for “spin”, preferring to tell it as it is, or rather how the data tells it to be – though of course always cognisant of the fact that we live in a complicated world and need to be pragmatic in our decision making. 

In 2019 he returned to the mainland to launch his own business, Scattered Clouds, which supports forward-thinking destinations, organisations and businesses to transform tourism sector data into insight.  During the eighteen months of this exciting new chapter clients have included tourist boards, destination representation companies and umbrella organisations within the sector.

David is delighted to have been appointed as a Trustee at Tourism for All, a charity that seeks to connect disabled people with accessible tourism product and to grow the number of tourism businesses that recognise the value of investing in this market segment.

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