Experience

Johnson & Laird

• New Zealand
• Performing Arts
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Talent Agent - Events

  • Nov 2020 - Present

• Talent Agent - Events

  • Nov 2020 - Present



Hilton Auckland

• New Zealand
• Hospitality
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Conference and Event Sales Manager

  • Nov 2017 - Jun 2020

  Hilton Hotels & Resorts is a global brand of full-service hotels and resorts and the flagship brand of American multinational hospitality company Hilton. Operating in 85 countries and territories across six continents, Hilton Hotels are known as the stylish, forward thinking global leaders of hospitality.Key achievements included attaining challenging budget targets in 2018 and 2019 by analysing booking patterns, lead times and peak days and introducing clear selling strategies. These assisted the team to identify the right business to take at the right time, and understand how to yield our meeting space to achieve maximum revenue. As well as this, both hotels ranked 1st and 2nd in the Australasia region for our Delphi audit (which measured how accurately we were using the system). When I started, we were sitting at 35% errors against a target of <10%, but by training staff to use the system correctly and efficiently and holding them accountable, I reduced the error rate to 2%, increasing bookings and productivity. In addition, I generated extra revenue with school ball packages when I saw an opportunity to introduce these. I worked with local suppliers to negotiate an attractive price which I packaged as a "one-stop-shop offer.” This generated $55k of revenue in 2019 and $82k for 2020 (as at June).We also achieved 84% for our customer satisfaction score against a target of 77% by regularly sharing our team satisfaction scores, celebrating wins and following up on concerns, and won Team of the Year awards in 2018 and 2019 by leading the team through some challenging times, initiating customer satisfaction strategies and focusing on training and development.



Crowne Plaza Auckland

• New Zealand
• Hospitality
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Conference Manager/Events Coordinator/Groups Coordinator

  • Jun 2012 - Nov 2017

  As the proud winner of New Zealand's Leading Business Hotel for three years in a row, Crowne Plaza Auckland is located in the heart of downtown Auckland and is surrounded by the best restaurants, shops, nightlife, museums, art galleries and live performance venues in the city.After holding the role of Groups Coordinator for six months, I was offered the chance to move into the Events team as a result of my hard work, strong attention to detail, and an ability to learn and adapt quickly.Highlights included project-managing the implementation of a new bookings system, including hosting a number of webinars, creating training material, and meeting tight deadlines with programmers. Once the back-end was complete, I explained the new system’s benefits to the team to convince them to work after hours to populate the new system with data. I also led the team to meet challenging targets in 2016 and 2017 by implementing strategies to bring the sales and conference teams together, working with the operations team on a complete overhaul of our menus and concept, and involving the sales team more in our activities.As well as this, I became a sports team subject matter expert; I began working with sports team while in Reservations, and once I moved into the Events team, I expanded my knowledge and remit. By building relationships with team mangers from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and Argentina, I built a strong understanding of their individual requirements and used this to create a best practice uniform guide which was used for all hotels in the region. Finally, as Hotel Liaison for the FIFA Under 20 World Cup 2015, I introduced a central communication hub in the office and a shared Google doc to track team movements. This significantly streamlined the operation and increased efficiency, and feedback from FIFA post-tournament was that we were one of the best hotel operations that they had ever worked with.



Go Holidays Travel Wholesale New Zealand

• Groups, Sports and Events Senior Consultant

  • Jun 2007 - Sep 2010

  Established over 30 years ago, GO Holidays has expanded into a diverse travel group comprised of specialist travel divisions based in Auckland. It provides a wide range of travel products in all corners of the globe, and enjoys strong relationships with suppliers across the world, including the majority of on-line carriers in New Zealand.In this role, I was responsible for providing quotations to retail travel agents and directing clients to worldwide destinations, liaising extensively with suppliers to ensure product and pricing was suitable and accurate, securing and managing bookings and finalising billing and invoicing, selling and promoting events to potential clients and a range of general administration duties as required.