Back home and bringing world with him

Jun 8 2009 By Karen Dent, The Journal

Lots of luck, hard work and a passion for the North East are key to the make-up of former brewery boss turned tourism champion Geoff Hodgson. Karen Dent reports.

NAPOLEON said: 'Don't show me good generals, show me lucky generals', says Geoff Hodgson, "and the journey I’ve had, I’ve had some immense luck along the way."

The former boss of the Federation Brewery, who is now chairman of the North East Tourism Advisory Board, has come full circle and now lives a few hundred yards from his childhood home in Gosforth.

Mr Hodgson, who is married to Jill and has a 15-year-old daughter called Georgia, never expected to return to the North East until he was ready to retire.

After Oxford University, he worked for Procter & Gamble in the Midlands, moved to the capital to work for drinks giant Diageo and jetted around the world as a London-based marketing man for Coca-Cola, before the chance to return home to work for Scottish & Newcastle breweries arose.

"Getting the job at Scottish & Newcastle was down to pure chance that the guy that had been asked by Newcastle Breweries to find a sales and marketing director knew me," he says.

"I was plugging away in London and expected to be in London for the next 20 years or in Alberta or Czechoslovakia or wherever. [Then] getting the job at the Fed was all down to knowing the auditors that were concerned with that business.

"I worked on the basis I was going to be 50 before I came home, because at that point there were very, very few big jobs in the North East in anything I was connected with.

"There was the old guard of Vaux Breweries and Cameron’s Breweries, there were no soft drink companies up here at the time. I’d always thought I’d spend a long hard paper round away from the region and then I’d come back in my retirement.

"I don’t think anyone who has lived up here for any period of time doesn’t love living here. I grew up here, family – my parents are here – my love of the Northumberland coast, the Tyne Valley, some of my hobbies are out in the country – it’s all on the doorstep. You can live in the city and play in the country. It’s unique in the whole of the UK."

Now one of his jobs – and he has his fingers in a lot of pies – is to pass on that passion for the region to as many people as possible. He has been in post with the tourism advisory board for 18 months and is looking forward to a successful summer.

"Tourism as an industry in the region is actually the fourth biggest industry we have," he says.

"If you added together coal mining, forestry and agriculture, tourism actually employs about 65,000 people, which is significantly more than those industries combined do.

"The signs are that we’re going to have a very, very good summer. But it’s not just about the weather, it’s not just about the fact that yes we’re having some economic issues, the last five years the whole of the region in tourism has actually held hands together and actually worked together instead of fighting each other.

"The public sector is advertising the region with passionate people, passionate places. They’ve put money into big projects like the Great North Museum, Saltholme, those sorts of things but at the same time, the private sector has invested.

"We’re not unique but it’s quite interesting – we’re held up as being the best example of tourism where each part of the region has a partnership.

"That works up here because people have come to the table, joined hands and decided what’s important. Outside London, we’re the only region in the country where tourism is in growth. It’s a really, really big thing for us now."