Box Office Manager - SicilyFest

SicilyFest is a food, drink, and music festival that brings together food vendors, wine and spirits producers, artists, and representatives from Sicily over four days. Held annually for the past 10 years, it has grown to welcome more than 20,000 attendees in the 2025 edition, taking over the Business Design Centre in Islington.

For this edition, SicilyFest partnered with Gotobeat to handle production and box office operations, as previous years had faced long entry queues that wrapped around the building. Gotobeat brought me in to manage the festival entrance, with the goal of improving crowd flow, enhancing the guest experience, ensuring health & safety compliance, and personally welcoming artists and Italian embassy representatives, escorting them to meeting areas and green rooms.

By the end of the festival, the client expressed great satisfaction with our work, we significantly reduced waiting times to just a few minutes, while maintaining high standards of security and staff coordination.

On a personal note, I had a wonderful time working alongside the Italian community in London, a culture and country that hold a special place in my heart. Some of the tasks I took on included:

• Designing and setting up a smooth ticketing and entry system that kept queues moving and made it easy for over 20,000 guests to get in across the four days.
  

• Leading a team of 10 staff members plus security team, making sure ticket scanning, on-site sales, and the front-of-house experience ran smoothly.
  

• Welcoming, briefing, and accompanying artists, VIP guests, and Italian authorities, making sure they had access to green rooms and meeting spaces.
  

• Dealing with customer service questions and sorting out any ticketing issues on the spot.