Ep 34 ⚽️ Sports tourism in Bristol and the exciting plans for Bristol's Ashton Gate Stadium, home of Bristol City Football Club and Bristol Bears with CEO Mark Kelly.

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Welcome back to the first Visitor Elves episode of 2024. I hope you had a good Christmas season and your plans for 2024 are shaping up.

In today's conversation, I'm going behind the scenes of Ashton Gate Stadium, home of Bristol City Football Club, Bristol Bears, and Bristol Flyers, with the wonderful, Dublin-born CEO Mark Kelly of Ashton Gate Sporting Quarter.

We chat about:

The exciting plans to develop a new Bristol Sporting Quarter with a 5,000-capacity conference centre, two hotels, multi storey car park office, housing and retail space.
How concerts such as Take That (June 2024) are the biggest drivers of staying tourists at Ashton Gate.
How they had to turn down £10m of potential conference business last year as the facilities were just not big enough.
Mark's career journey from a hotel management qualification to his amazing job today, which includes leading a new game reserve in Botswana for the Lansdown family.
Some of his favourite places to eat include Aqua, Sow & Cow, and Cafe Burra (owned by some of the Bristol Bears players).

Enjoy the episode!

Read the transcription here.

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This episode is sponsored by Hello Starling.

Hello Starling, is an award-winning Media Planning and Buying agency that specialises in delivering advertising campaigns with great results for visitor attractions and destinations.
They've worked with brands such as Bristol Zoo Project, Visit Shropshire, Visit Conwy, Visit Herefordshire and the National Tourism Office for Poland. If you want to be the centre of attention, visit hellostarling.com today.

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