Born in Canada (1967) to British parents, educated in Switzerland, England and Scotland and living in Spain, Chris is a genuinely vocational advocate of international tourism. This vocation for destination marketing was soon realized when at just 19 and whilst studying Spanish, Japanese and European Politics at Edinburgh University he founded his first company, a publisher of high-end travel guides Edinburgh for distribution in the city’s top hotels. He hasn’t stopped promoting tourism destinations since.
He moved to Madrid in 1988 and founded one of the first destination representation and marketing agencies specializing in outbound travel in a country focused on inbound traffic. Over the last 30 years he has designed and implemented promotional strategies in Spain and Portugal for over 50 leading travel brands including corporations such as Expedia, Latam Airlines Group, Ethiopian Airlines, Kayak and most especially for destinations as varied as Chile, Kenya, The Philippines, Slovenia, The Gambia, Yemen, Panama, Iceland, Britain, Scotland, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Malaga Costa del Sol, etc. Although based in Spain, Chris has a strong understanding of pan-European outbound travel and has coordinated all of the European marketing for Central and South American destinations that use Madrid as an entry point and hub for European promotion (Panama, Ecuador, Central America Tourism Association, Latam Airlines, etc.). The Interface Tourism group has become the market leader for destination marketing in Southern Europe with its own offices in Madrid, Paris, Milan, Amsterdam.
As well as running his own agency, in 2015, Chris joined MMGY Global, the leading integrated tourism marketing agency in the world, as their first non-U.S. based director to assist the group in its ambitious internalization plan. As director of global strategies, Chris is responsible for MMGY Global's international development and for bridging cultural divides between destination clients and their international markets. As part of the globalization of MMGY Global, Chris founded Travel Consul, a global network of specialist tourism marketing firms. Travel Consul’s member agencies collectively work for over 450 tourism brands around the world.
Chris is a regular speaker at international destination marketing events. Some recent presentations include:
- “Sustainable Tourism Marketing” London Tourism Summit (London)
- Sustainability ranking in OTAs (Business with Values Conference Barcelona)
- “Innovation in Destination marketing” UNWTO Smart Destinations Conference,
- “The Future of Programmatic advertising for destinations” Turespaña Digital Innovation seminar
- “New communication strategies for hotels” Guest (Madrid)
- “Innovation for Tourism SMEs” European Commission SME workshop (Madrid)
- “The DMO of the future” Marktur Forum FIT (Argentina)
- “Digital Marketing to the Chinese traveler” Think China (Madrid)
- “The impact of GDPR on Data based travel marketing” Tourism Marketing Summit (Malaga)
- “Robotics and automatization in tourism” FiturTec (Madrid)
- “The Digital Transformation of Destination marketing” (WTM Latin America Sao Paulo)
- “Innovation in Tourism” (Tic Tac Tenerife)
- “The DMO of the Future” (Brasilia)
- “Communications in Tourism: (ProPr Conference, Croatia)
- “Destination brand communication strategies” (ProPr Conference, Slovenia)