Four key appointments made to board of Destination Coventry

Published by

Peter Davison

Four new appointments have been made to bolster the oversight board of Destination Coventry.

Coventry and Warwickshire’s newest destination management organisation has expanded its oversight board, which is made up of public and private partners, bringing it to 10 members.

Richard Harrison, managing director of No Ordinary Hospitality Management (NOHM), Emma Harrabin, manager of Fargo Village, Dal Dhillon, managing director of Dhillon’s Brewery and Laura Capraro, product development and distribution manager for VisitEngland have been named as the four new additions to the board.

Harrison heads of up the newly formed NOHM, which includes Coombe Abbey Hotel, St Mary’s Guildhall and a number of other venues in Coventry.

Dhillon’s award-winning micro-brewery was founded in 2015 and continues to grow, with a group of Dhillon’s pubs and bars opening across the city.

Harrabin leads a team of staff at FarGo Village which supports more than 40 independent creative businesses, manages multiple venues and programmes over 100 events per year.

Capraro will be representing the national tourism agency on the board. She supported Discover England Fund projects with their product development and is currently working with DMOs and TXGB on VisitEngland’s Escape the Everyday domestic campaign.

The four appointments join the existing six who have sat on the board since its formation in 2021.

The board is chaired by Paul Michael, commercial venue director at Coventry Building Society Arena.

Existing members include Laura McMillan from Coventry City of Culture Trust, Trish Willets from Coventry Business Improvement District (BID), Chris Hartley of Hartley Events, David Nuttall from Coventry City Council and Louise Bennett from Coventry & Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce.

Destination Coventry is a collaboration between Coventry City Council and Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce – with an emphasis on ensuring both public and private sector voices are central to shaping its activities.
It includes two well-established consumer-facing brands ‘Visit Coventry’ and ‘Conference Coventry and Warwickshire’, with focuses on leisure and business tourism respectively.

The DMO is tasked with marketing Coventry and Warwickshire as a visitor destination of choice, to grow and support the visitor economy.

Paul Michael (pictured) chairman of the Destination Coventry oversight board, said: “We’re very proud of the oversight board we have assembled, and we feel it offers fantastic representation across the region’s tourism, leisure and hospitality sector.

“Private and public partners working together to drive a successful and sustainable development of tourism in Coventry and Warwickshire is at the heart of what Destination Coventry does.

“We have two distinct brands, Conference Coventry and Warwickshire and Visit Coventry, so it is important that our board is able to advise on the direction of each brand.

“Richard, Dal, Emma and Laura bring their expertise to an already very strong board of industry experts.

“This is a board with the same goal, to promote our region as a compelling destination and ultimately bring investment in the region through the burgeoning visitor economy.”

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.