The woman bringing entertainment back to life in the heart of England

Thousands of horses and 40,000 people descended on Birmingham this month for the annual Horse of the Year Show at the National Exhibition Centre. One car park was turned into stables for the horses, whose owners were there to show off the best of the equine world while also enjoying a retail jamboree of boots, saddles and jackets.
A week later and the same venue was full of caravans, one of 167 exhibitions a year at the centre that also stages Crufts, the dog show, which attracts 159,000 human visitors on its own.
The NEC Group, a leading live events business for 48 years, has come back to life after the pandemic when losses hit £32 million at the 2021 peak of the crisis.
It is run by Mel Smith, the former boss of Ocado Retail, who has been chief executive of the group since last year. She says “momentum has been restored” from the Covid years which forced shareholders to inject £100 million to refinance the business. Newly published accounts for the year ending March 31 show earnings before tax of £45 million on revenue of £176.5 million.
Smith now wants to “lift” the venue to the next level by boosting visitor numbers and offering new experiences. She has been joined by Sir Nick Varney, the former Merlin Entertainments chief executive with more than 30 years’ experience working in the tourism and leisure industry, who has just taken on the role of non-executive chairman.
The duo are out to fill the five venues that come under the group’s portfolio: the NEC itself, the International Convention Centre, Vox Conference Venue, plus bp pulse Live and Utilita Arena Birmingham for entertainment. Most of the venues, including the NEC, are located right next to Birmingham airport and a mainline railway station, thereby offering “some of the best-connected real estate in Europe” according to Smith.
Smith, 50, a New Zealander, fizzes with energy as she tours the site dressed down in an arena crew jacket and trainers. She says she dislikes appearing in the press but is open and chatty nonetheless.
The 186,000 sq m of covered indoor space comprising 20 interconnecting halls is as versatile as it is huge, or as Smith describes it “a blank canvas”. The group, owned by the investment giant Blackstone since 2018, makes its money from rental, ancillary services, food and beverages and car parking. “My parents ran a pub. I feel like I am a landlady again,” jokes Smith.
She admits that she is glad to be free of the “tyranny of being listed” at Ocado which meant that she got up at 5.30am to check the latest sales figures. These days she knows what is in the calendar three years ahead. Yet she still gets up very early and often works 15 or 16 hours a day, fuelled by coffee, her only vice. “I don’t drink or smoke.”
Travel is clearly a passion. She met her French husband on a bus in Peru and has since visited every country in the world, culminating in Yemen in 2019. Seeing so many countries involved “a lot of cockroaches, hitchhiking and sitting on the back of motorbikes across West Africa”. She loved it and “was held up at gunpoint only once, in Colombia”. She tries to get to Scotland regularly to walk 30 miles. Every summer she goes hiking for a longer stretch, most recently in the Pyrenees.
Smith claims her one aspiration as a outdoorsy New Zealander was to have a “camper van with a mattress in it”. Her van seems to go everywhere with her. Tim Steiner, her former boss at Ocado, objected to it being parked outside his house, while an Ocado worker once challenged whether it should be in VIP parking. This down-to-earth approach shows through in her leadership style. Smith likes to roll up her sleeves and has cleaned the lavatories at NEC. A stint as a barista looms when we meet.
Yet there is no denying that she is a high-flyer. The McKinsey veteran was strategy director at M&S and boss of Ocado Retail during the pandemic; she has also worked at TalkTalk and Goldman Sachs. She took the NEC job because it sounded “interesting and varied”. Although London-based, she wanted to work in a smaller community and describes people in Birmingham as warm and friendly, although she still counts the capital, where she lives with her husband in a one-bedroom flat, as home.
Her ambition for the NEC, whose closest rival is the ExCel centre in London, to “be busy every day of the year” and to offer an “ever-evolving set of experiences for everyone to explore and enjoy”. She knows what she has in her hands in terms of the site, which boasts more than 160 acres of hard-standing ground and 75 acres of woodland, as well as all the covered space. “No one’s ever going to build something like this ever again.”
The group, which employs 3,800, is now back to where it was before Covid struck and is building momentum. “It’s astounding to me how strong consumer demand is to both buy tickets and come and have a great night out,” she says, adding: “The conventions business is not trading where I’d like it to be, but has lots of growth potential. The exhibition arm is trading really well.” Blackstone is happy with the numbers, she says.
She has spent her first year investing in the site’s premium offering and car parking. The next phase will involve doing things that “we haven’t done before” such as buying shows or launching their own. “We’ve never put on our own events. We have just rented space to other people.”
The group has already bought a boat show, BoatLife, which sits with the new events organiser arm, called Pendigo. An architect has been brought in to look at “immersive experiences”. She assures me that a “robust plan” is coming for the group within months.
She is excited by the prospect of hosting the Invictus Games in 2027 and a swimming pool may be built for the occasion. Longer term, HS2, the planned high-speed line which means trains from the capital could take under 40 minutes to reach Birmingham, is (probably) coming down the tracks.
If anyone can fill the venues to the rafters, it is Smith with her seemingly boundless energy, not to mention her love of a challenge. Varney, with his wealth of leisure and entertainment expertise, is clearly on board. He said: “This is a great business with a unique offering and world-class venues. I look forward to supporting the team in delivering on its significant potential.”