richardfrosty – Richard Frost – Manchester

Well the last couple of months have certainly been a bit strange.

Obviously, the UK’s been through a torrid time because of Covid-19, although thankfully our infection and mortality rates seem to be steadily falling, and lockdown restrictions are gradually lifting. On a personal level, I’ve fortunately managed to avoid catching coronavirus so far, though like millions of others I was furloughed from work as a result of the crisis.

At least it gave me the opportunity to finally republish a selection of articles I’ve written down the years, which weren’t available anywhere else outside my hard drive – the world needs to know if Chris Kamara can hold a tune after all. I also took the chance to freshen up this website, improving the layout and launching a new page of testimonials from people I’ve worked with.

We go again

Since then, however, I’ve been rather busy on the job front. The upshot is that I no longer work for Sleeper Media, publisher of Sleeper, Starboard and Supper; I’m now working remotely from Manchester for a German market research company called TOPHOTELPROJECTS as its new editor-in-chief, with a particular focus on its hospitality news website TOPHOTELNEWS.

Basically, I’m responsible for overseeing and improving the editorial side of things – managing a team of writers around the world, commissioning freelancers, copy editing, sourcing and writing articles, and expanding the readership and boosting conversions. In some ways, it’s quite different to what I was doing before as TOPHOTELPROJECTS is probably best known for its hotel construction database, whereas Sleeper Media’s specialism is print magazines. In other ways, though, there are plenty of similarities – both of them cover the hotel sector, both are B2B, and both organise international events bringing the industry together.

Back stronger

It’s a shame that my time at Sleeper Media came to an end because of Covid-19 as I’m proud of what I achieved there, initially as assistant editor of Supper and later as the company’s first online editor. But equally I’m very much looking forward to making my mark as editor-in-chief of TOPHOTELPROJECTS – a whole new project…