Joining Montgomery in 1966, John became managing director of Exhibition Consultants Ltd (ECL), in 1976. Under his direction as the company’s principal consultant, ECL’s assignments became diverse and worldwide, embracing feasibility studies for new national exhibition and trade fair venues in Hong Kong, Thailand, and Indonesia, Lagos Nigeria and Sudan’s Khartoum International Fairgrounds. John has also directed exhibition research and training projects funded by UN and European agencies for developing countries and a multiplicity of other exhibition-related assignments. As managing director of ECL, he was project director for the operation and marketing of the Liverpool International Garden Festival in 1984, then the largest public event to have been held in the UK since the 1951 Festival of Britain and an event recognised by the World Expo body, the Bureau of International Exhibitions (BIE).

In the 1990s, whilst retaining his directorship of ECL, John turned to heritage management and was chief executive of the Mary Rose Trust, one of Britain’s most prestigious independent museum projects, and subsequently joined the Royal Artillery Museum as director of the project to re-locate the world’s most important collection of artillery at a new museum within London’s Royal Arsenal. Between 2000-2003 he was with English Heritage as director of the new visitor centre project at Stonehenge, England’s most important World Heritage Site and the UK’s most challenging heritage project. Between 2003-2005, John spent a portion of his time promoting British expertise in the tourism sector as the UK government’s Tourism Export Promoter and between 2005-08 led projects for England’s Historic Royal Palaces organisation.

More recently, as ECL’s director and lead consultant, John led the feasibility study to modernise the Cyprus State Fair and in 2009/10 he was the ECL lead consultant for an Arts Exhibition Centre study in Hong Kong and an exhibition industry study for the government of Oman. Currently he is a frequent traveller to Asia, mobilising a series of trade shows in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and advising on a major new trade fair complex in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

An economist by education, John has served on the Council of the University of Reading, is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (UK) and a Fellow of the Tourism Society and of the Royal Society of Arts (UK).