interview
Island Life - April/May 2010
Photo: From left to right: Brigette, Matthew, Simon & Diana
Poetry Society and Drama Club at school,
“The family policy was always ‘if we
down to the Island, the first three years
And so maybe I saw myself as an aspiring
have a vacancy, then we will only consider
were touch-and-go as to whether I would
actor!
a member of the family if they have the
stay. Although I used to come down every
right attitude and qualifications’.
year to visit my family, I was born on the
“I didn’t really know what I wanted
to do, but because I enjoyed acting
But in late 1978 a vacancy arose and
my parents suggested as I liked mixing
he was invited for an interview ‘in my
with people I should go into retail
uncle’s oak-lined study’ and was offered a
management.”
position in junior management. He says:
That is when, in his words he was
mainland and we missed old friends and
family.
But in time Simon made new friends, the
job had clicked, and he was enjoying the
“I took it because I didn’t want a career
part he was playing in the family business,
‘shoved out the door’ to join the John
being just a cog in a machine - I wanted
which became a limited company in 1993
Lewis Partnership on a management
to be the machine.”
and subsequently acquired the Robin Hill
training scheme. But his enthusiasm
However, he admits: “After I moved
Adventure Park.
waned when it was suggested ‘you are
doing really well in this scheme, so in 20
years or so you could be a department
manager’.
Simon left to join Ladbrooke Holidays
for 18 months as a camp management
trainee, working in Cornwall and London,
and having met ‘the girl of my dreams at
the time’ he was married in 1978.
At that time he worked for tourist
attraction company ‘The Dropping Well
and Mother Shipton’s Cave’ in Yorkshire
– giving him his first real taste of the
tourism business that has subsequently
become his life.
“I wanted to work in tourist attractions,
but at this point in my career no one had
said to me, and I had not been brought
up to believe, there would be a job in the
family business.
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Photo: Simon's parents Peter & June Dabell
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