Hattendorf signs off – for now:
From the IBTM Forum for Advocacy in Barcelona to his final edition as chief executive of the UFI Annual Congress held in Cologne, Kai Hattendorf shares his reflections on ten years at the global exhibitions industry association helm, seven of which featured as a board member of the Joint Meetings Industry Council (JMIC) including four as its President.
Caption: We all have our lines to sing. Together we can sing the whole song.
Hattendorf was in a defiant mood in Barcelona, insistent that there is a growing understanding by governments of Business Events as a strategy to implement the 15 dimensions of impact articulated in the JMIC Manifesto. And while those impacts differ between the exhibitions industry, the conventions industry, or their travel, transport, and hospitality supply chains, it remains that the outcomes of events far outweigh the visitor economy associated with the hosting of these events.
“We have our narrative, and we have our dialect in which we speak,” he said, “and it’s working!”
Of the economic and societal benefits of business events, he added, “The bigger our body of proof, the easier this (advocacy) will be,” he said, “until we reach a tipping point when it is a given,” he said, citing the work of UFI and the OECD.