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.  Huge thanks to podcast sponsor Noble Performs. Noble provide Unstoppable digital marketing to maximise your performance. From SEO to Paid Social and more, we have the tools you need. Find out more about host Kelly Ballard and the Visitor Elves here. Subscribe to the Visitor Elves newsletter, to receive the latest podcast releases and inspirational tips. To comment and ask questions about the episode, head over to: Instagram LinkedIn If you have enjoyed this podcast episode, please take a moment to give me a few stars on Apple podcasts or Spotify, it helps to encourage more people to listen and learn from our stories. 🙏