John Gallery

John Gallery, FTS, MIH

John loves transforming hospitality and tourism businesses for the better. He does that with new ways to look at problems, and out-of-the-ordinary ideas you can implement without them costing the earth. From cold calling to building websites, John has re-skilled himself countless times throughout his career to stay ahead of the competition. And it’s this eclectic bag of tools, and network of experts who plug the gaps, which he puts at your disposal. John works on many projects with trusted associates who provide complementary skills.

Who is John?

25 years as a four-star hotel general manager including 12 years at the helm of York’s popular Marriott hotel taught John many valuable lessons. Not just about how to run a highly successful hotel business, but how to stand out in the marketplace, spread your message effectively and recruit new custom. Also a voluntary city tour guide in historic York, John is well rehearsed in bringing ideas to life for newcomers. John was also chairman of VisitYork for four years, founded LateMeetings.com in 2005 and developed it as the first online booking portal for meetings and events. The business was sold to Expotel (now part of Capita) in 2010. He later established moregiving.co.uk, a digital platform for companies to raise funds for their favourite charities.

Who does John work for?

John owns and manages Great Potential and works for independent hotels, destinations and visitor attractions providing Marketing and Management Consultancy services, Mentoring, Research, Sales, and Public Relations. John is a Fellow of the Tourism Society and chairman of its Yorkshire branch, career-long member of the Institute of Hospitality, chairman of the research and market intelligence group for the Business Visits and Events Partnership (BVEP) prior to which he was a council member of the Meetings Industry Association.

As well as his past chairman role at VisitYork, John’s work in destinations has included managing Conference Guernsey (2003- 2005), PR and Marketing for Tees Valley Tourism (2005-2007), research study into future visitor accommodation requirements for the City of York (2014-15). John assisted with Lincolnshire’s South Kesteven tourism activities (2001-2003) and again with its Aviation Heritage initiative in 2017. Since 2012 John has been involved in the development of the World of James Herriot in Thirsk and joined its board as marketing director in January 2021. He became the Herriot Country Tourism Group chairman in 2020. John is also a board member of Bedern Hall, York. 

John’s Skills Set:

Hotel Ops and General Management Experience including P&L responsibility Training, Development and Mentoring Skills and Experience Marketing - Off and Online knowledge and experience, including channel management Sales and Business Development Negotiator PR - Off and Online Brand Communicator Digital/Technical knowledge and management - HTML/Wordpress/PHP/Asp.net Research and knowledge seeker with high-level research skills Culture and Heritage Enthusiast

John is NOT interested in:

Jargon, Moaning, Negativity, Failure or the Status Quo (Love the band not the condition).