Susan Briggs is Director of The Tourism Network and is still involved in every project. She has over 20 years' experience of the tourism industry and is author of seven marketing and guide books.  

Susan studied languages, and then began her tourism industry career with a small incoming tour operator in her native Yorkshire, follwed by a couple of years with a specialist study tour operators and incentive company in London. Whilst working there she began to realise that every time a representative from an attraction, hotel or destination came to sell to her, she usually ended up giving them new contacts and business ideas.

It didn't take long before she decided to start her own marketing consultancy (1990), helping destinations, accommodation providers and attractions to promote to a wider market and develop new revenue. Before long her client list had grown to include Historic Royal Palaces, hotels through-out the UK, English Heritage and the then British Tourist Authority (now VisitBritain). They recommended Susan to others and since then all our business has come through word of mouth (saves a fortune on advertising!).

Susan has undertaken projects for small and large organisations and companies. These include national and regional tourist boards, regional development agencies, major and minor visitor attractions and accommodation providers.

Projects have included development and implementation of tourism and marketing strategies and campaigns, communications' plans, brochure and web site development, facilitating brainstorms, "marriage guidance" between between small private businesses and public sector organisations, business engagement, multicultural marketing, promoting to groups and the travel trade, developing new ways of targeting VFR business, bringing different sectors like cultural industries and tourism together, developing marketing consortia and speaking at many events.

Every project has been subtly different so there have been many chances to learn even more about this fascinating and complex industry. Susan has also tried to pass on some of her skills by offering training workshops and writing advisory articles and books. She has now trained over 2000 people in practical marketing techniques, developed new business advisory surgeries, toolkits and "how to" advisory publications for organisations like VisitBritain.

Susan Briggs is author of "Successful Tourism Marketing" and "Successful Web Marketing", both published by Kogan Page and now translated into several other languages, and "English Experiences" a sort of alternative guidebook published by Metro Publications.

Her most recent books have been published by VisitBritain  - "How to market your accommodation business" and "Hot to market your accommodation business online".