SCEPTRE winner - Gordon McKinnon, The Trafford Centre

Published: 27 August, 2009

Gordon McKinnon, The Trafford Centre

Centre Manager of the Year at a Large Shopping Centre

Gordon McKinnon has been The Trafford Centre’s director of operations for the last five years. The past 12 months have been his busiest yet with the completion of the Great Hall and the opening of Barton Square.

Gordon has also devised and implemented the Trafford Quays Leisure Village strategy, pulling together all the adjacent leisure attractions under a single tourism strategy which aims to promote development and growth across the entire area.

At the same time he has met a number of key performance indicators: footfall for 2008 was up 12 per cent year-on-year driven by an intensive programme of events from Afrika Afrika to the Motorshow, which brought in an additional 250, 000 visitors.

Average customer spend increased from £89 per head in 2007 to £119 in 2008. And dwell time was up 2 per cent year-on-year, powered by a comprehensive entertainments calendar ranging from half-term children’s events to large scale pop concerts.

The 2008 service charge was reduced by 1.5 per cent on 2007, and the service charge has been reduced by a further 7 per cent – or £1m – in 2009.. This has been achieved through operational efficiencies while protecting service standards and the customer experience.

The director of operations completes a full walk-around of the malls every day, covering no less than three miles as he visits all the MSUs and as many of the other units as possible on a rotating basis.