Our People

John Waterworth, Chief Executive

John has 25 years experience in the leisure sector both in park management and at director level, including spells with Warner Holidays and Granada Entertainments. He joined Parkdean Leisure as a holiday park General Manager in 1992 and rapidly rose through the Parkdean Leisure management structure, becoming Operations Director in 1995. Shortly before the sale of Parkdean Leisure to Rank plc, John had left Parkdean Leisure and taken up the position of General Manager for Butlins at Skegness. John joined the new Parkdean as Chief Executive to persue the "buy and build" strategy, which started with the acquisition of Trecco Bay in 1999, to the latest purchase of Weststar holidays in 2007.

Darrin Bamsey, National Caravan Sales Director

Darrin joined Parkdean in March 2001 from Haven Holidays Limited, where he was a senior executive with the Rank Organisation in Haven Holidays. Darrin became National Sales Manager for Haven covering 60 parks in 1997.

Darrin was also instrumental in the introduction of caravan sales to the Butlins Group. Darrin has 26 years of experience in the holiday park industry and is responsible for Parkdean's lodge and holiday homes sales.

Mike Wilmot, Financial Director

Mike joined Parkdean in September 2002 as Internal Auditor to set up an internal audit function. Mike worked in Internal Audit for 2 years before becoming Financial Controller in October 2004 and then Financial Director in July 2009. He has been involved with the due diligence and post acquisition integrations for 4 acquisitions totalling 12 parks and has been highly influential in the development of financial reporting, systems, procedures and controls during his time with Parkdean. Prior to joining Parkdean, Mike worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Newcastle for 5 years during which time he qualified as a Chartered Accountant and worked as an Audit and Business Assurance Manager with large Financial Services and Leisure clients.

Judith Archibold, Legal and Corporate Services Director

Judith's first role at Parkdean was as its in-house solicitor in September 2002. She then progressed to become Company Secretary in November 2002. As company secretary Judith was responsible for the legal and regulatory work associated with the company being listed on AIM. After Alchemy bought Parkdean in May 2006, Judith became responsible for overseeing all the legal, regulatory and licensing work across the Group. She is a qualified solicitor with over 20 years experience dealing with all aspects of corporate banking and business law. Prior to joining Parkdean, Judith worked as a senior associate solicitor at Dickinson Dees and previously spent several years as a senior legal advisor at private equity company, 3i plc in Newcastle.

Maggie Pavlou, HR Director

After many years of an operational focused career within the Holiday and Leisure divisions of the Rank Organisation, Maggie then became National Training & Development Manager with Warner Holidays. Originally from the North East she returned to the region in 1997 joining Vaux as Head of Personnel. She then moved to leading recruitment firm NRG as Associate Director heading up their HR Consultancy Division prior to joining Parkdean as HR Director in 2004. President of the North East Chamber of Commerce 2006 - 2009 Maggie currently holds a number of non executive board positions including Newcastle Gateshead Initiative, NECC, North East Tourism Advisory Board, Northern Lights Film Festival and the Princes Trust.

Chloe Squires, Holiday Sales Contact Centre Manager and Head of Customer Services

Chloe began with Parkdean as Training and Development Manager in July 2003 and in January 2004, took on the role of Contact Centre Manager. Chloe is responsible for developing the sales and service team and works on enhancing productivity and standards across the contact centre team to ensure a supportive network for the parks and the holiday sales function, as well as overseeing the Customer Service side of the business. Prior to joining Parkdean Chloe worked in Hotel Management as well as Sales and Training Management at British Airways UK and Asia Pacific. She also spent some time setting up Contact Centres and building Sales Teams in both the Travel and Banking industry in the UK and Australia.

Paul McLaughlin, E-Development and Systems Manager

Paul joined Parkdean in June 2002, working in roles in the Contact Centre and Marketing before setting up an E-Development & Systems department to take advantage of the growth of the online spectrum. During this time he project managed the integration of a new web-based reservation system along with online booking in June 2005. Paul is involved in all aspects of holiday sales including yield management and promotions.

Stephen Griffiths, Regional Director

Stephen joined Parkdean in 2002 as Park Director of Ruda Holiday Park. He had previously worked at Butlins in Skegness for 6 years as Deputy Resort Director and Group Retail Executive. Stephen moved to White Acres in 2004 as Area Manager and has gradually increased his responsibilities from Area Director (Cornwall) to now looking after the South of the country, in addition to his role as Retail Director for the Company. Prior to working in the holiday park sector, Stephen was employed by Lingfield Racecourses Ltd, as Commercial Manager overseeing 8 race courses.

David Key, Regional Director

David commenced his career with Parkdean in 1998 as General Manager of Nairn Lochloy Holiday Park. In 2001 he became Area Manager of the 4 Scottish Parks owned by Parkdean and with 2 further acquisitions in Scotland became Regional Director in 2005. David now has responsibility for 8 parks within Parkdean and is responsible for all aspects of the parks financial and customer related activities. Prior to joining Parkdean David worked within the Holiday Park industry for 8 years and prior to this worked within the hotel industry for Thistle and Crest Hotels in a management capacity for over 10 years.

Karl Schmidtke, Regional Director

Karl Joined Parkdean in November 2007 as Regional Director responsible for the Welsh parks and Group Gaming. Prior to this Karl worked for the Noble Organisation for 10 years overseeing Northern Operations. Karl trained in the Hotel and Catering field and spent 15 years running hotels, working internationally primarily in the three and four star market as a General Manager and as a Hotel & Leisure Consultant for Panell Kerr Forster.

Martin Berger, Entertainment Manager

Martin joined Parkdean as Entertainment Executive in 2007. Starting his career with The National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, he enjoyed a successful fifteen year career as a performer before setting up the entertainment operation of Weststar Holidays. Winner of a national 'award for excellence' in entertainment, Martin is now responsible for the Parkdean entertainment department including show production, Entertainment development and casting.