Day in the life of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority manager

Gillian Taylor explains how bringing conferences to the capital can require everything from bid proposals presented in Hong Kong to meetings in the minaret of the Grand Mosque.

Gillian Tayor, a business tourism manager for the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, outside the ADTA office.

Gillian Taylor is a business tourism manager for the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, where she helps to bring conferences to the capital. She talks about how work took her inside a minaret of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.

5.30am

I get up early because the kids start school at 7.15. I do their lunches and get them ready for school. The older one never even opens his lunchbox but I'll probably be perceived as a bad mother if I sent him away with an empty lunchbox. We're out of the door at 7.00.

8am

We have to give our fingerprints and scan in, so we are meant to be on time at 8.00. First thing is getting through e-mails, then making sure all of the teams have things they're working on, like preparing for a trade show. The biggest conference we have coming is the World Ophthalmology Congress in 2012, with 12,000 ophthalmologists. Our role was to put a bid in against other cities. We had to give our presentation in Hong Kong.

9am-11am

We have an industry development committee that meets every six weeks in order to discuss potential leads for Abu Dhabi. That's made up of 12 sectors including hotels, professional conference organisers, attractions and airlines. We meet in different venues. The last one was in the minaret of the Grand Mosque. You'd think it's quite small but they have offices in them and a library where we had the meeting. The meeting before we had at Ferrari World.

Lunch

I make lunch for the boys in the morning and bring in my own, which is usually a variation from theirs. I eat at the desk.

Early afternoon

We may be finalising everything we're doing for a trade show we're going to. At the moment we might have a meeting about Imex, a trade show in Frankfurt at the end of May. We have to plan everything: appointments, functions and presentations for three days.

Mid-afternoon

We are out of the office if we have a client who comes to do a tour. We had people from Calgary, Canada, here and took them to the restaurant in Emirates Palace that serves Emirati food and did the whole city tour.

4pm

Our official working hours are until 4.00. That's a time when I can catch up on things. We always have a number of projects on the go. I leave more at 6.00.

Dinnertime

Usually my husband has the boys doing their homework but I cook dinner and we sit down every night and talk about the day. I usually try to make dinner boy-friendly: spaghetti bolognese, meat and potatoes.

About 10pm

We watch EastEnders or Coronation Street and catch up on the news. I like reading The Sunday Times, but that usually takes me a week to read. I'm usually asleep by 10.30.