John Walsh-Heron

John Walsh-Heron

John Walsh-Heron in Managing Director of Tourism Quality Services Limited (TQS) and CEO of the Adventure Activities Licensing Service (AALS). He is a Fellow of the Tourism Society.

John graduated from Birmingham College of Food in 1970 and joined the Wales Tourist Board (WTB) in the early 70’s. He became Head of Trade and Consumer Affairs for the WTB. He was responsible for the Quality, Business Advice and Industry Liaison work of the Board. He left WTB in 1990 to establish and head up Tourism Quality Services Limited (TQS) the privatised company designated by WTB to operate its quality assurance schemes.

TQS specialises in quality assurance scheme design and implementation for businesses in the tourism, leisure and hospitality sector. This includes the delivery of the relevant training and induction programmes allied to such schemes. In 1996 TQS became designated by the then Department for Education & Skills as the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority (AALA). Through his work with AALS he has been involved in a number of major risk assessment projects.

John has developed and operated entrepreneurial development programmes in both Ireland and Wales specifically aimed at micro/sme’s in the tourism sector and acted as external consultant on similar programmes for USA and Slovenia. Client Groups for which programmes have been developed and implemented are listed at the end of this career summary. He has lectured extensively particularly on Cardiff University Post Graduate Tourism courses on the management of Visitor Attractions and Events. He is also the joint author (with Terry Stevens) of “ the Management of Visitor Attractions and Events” published by Prentice Hall.

He has developed and coordinated ‘delivery of quality’ training to WTB Quality Advisors, worked for UWIC to assist in them in developing a BBC Education series of television programmes about sme’s in tourism (Overnight Success). On behalf of TTFW developing and managing www.whodoiask.com, in conjunction with UWIC. Other recent projects include developing and writing the Festival & Events Toolkit for the Wales Tourist Board,, Mystery Customer projects for Greens of Southern Wales, Forestry Commission (Wales) & Welcome to the Arts (Arts Council) developing the website for Croeso Cynnes. the successor to Welcome Host in Wales
www.croesocynnes.org.

Recently he has been undertaking Mystery Customer projects for VisitWales as well as updating and relaunching whodoiask.com on behalf of the Regional Tourism Partnerships of Wales.http://www.whodoiask.com

John is at present Chairman of Tourism Society Wales and a Director of the Wales Tourism Alliance.

January 2012