Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK) has appointed Debbie Stanford-Kristiansen as its new director of sales and marketing.

Stanford-Kristiansen brings with her 24 years of extensive global experience and expertise in the Mice industry.

Paul D’Arcy, chief executive officer, BCCK, said: “With her experience in the industry both on the supplier and the venue side, Stanford-Kristiansen is ideally suited to be the driving force behind our continued thrust into the MICE Industry in line with our commitment to economic sustainability.”

“I am honoured by this exciting opportunity to work with BCCK, this is a stunning part of the world, a truly unique eco-tourism destination, home to the second oldest rainforest in the world yet equipped with one of the most modern, state-of-the-art and technologically advanced meetings facilities in the world, I am looking forward very much to working with Paul and his dedicated team to further showcase BCCK to the global Mice community,” said Stanford-Kristiansen.

“I can see that BCCK has the potential to be a major contributor to creating economic benefit and contributing to the meetings industry in terms of job creation, hotel utilisation, transport utilisation and other spin-off effects from the delegates who are known to spend up to six times more than leisure tourists.”

Stanford-Kristiansen has worked with expo@bahrain and Bahrain Exhibition & Convention Authority (BECA) for the last seven years.

Her major achievements in the kingdom included the development of the $385 million dollar expo@bahrain project, the successful establishment of Bahrain Exhibition and Convention Authority in 2006, initiation and launch of “Team Bahrain” and increasing the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre (BIECC)’s occupancy levels significantly.

Previously she was the vice president of global sales for the IMEX Exhibition, where she successfully increased exhibitor floor space year-on-year and together with her team achieved more than 3,000 international exhibitors for the inaugural event which took place in 2002.

In addition of being an active member of various Mice industry memberships, Stanford-Kristiansen spent six years on the board of Site (Society of Incentive & Travel Executives) UK and Ireland Chapter and was elected chapter president for two years.

She has also worked closely with the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA) and served on the UK Chapter of MPI (Meetings Professionals International) for two years. She spent two years as deputy chair of the Middle East & Africa Chapter of the International Congress & Convention Association (ICCA) between 2007 and 2008. – TradeArabia News Service