Conference News February 2020 | Page 36

36 Big Interview GETTING FUTURE FIT Lex Butler, chair of the Hotel Booking Agents Association (HBAA) and operations director of Wolf & White, talks about her plan for the association’s future ow did you get into the events industry? After huge emotional failure during work experience in our local veterinary practice at 15 – which was my career of choice since a small girl – I was stuck on where to focus my energies and new career aspirations. It was right in front of me; growing up I was already immersed in the industry, with my mother running a successful agency and me seeing, hearing and experiencing second hand how fabulous said industry was. I talked it through with her and started work experience during the summer at MeetingsFare before heading to Leeds Met University to study the Event Management Degree. How have your clients’ needs changed in recent years, and how do you stay ahead of the game to ensure they get the best experiences? In our client base at Wolf & White, it’s not so much their needs that have changed, but their expectations. Their industries are getting more competitive, brands want to remain unique, at the forefront of innovation and always be ‘the first’ to do something, deliver a ‘never before seen’. We do a lot of consumer events, so the needs come from the consumer. Moving on to your role at the HBAA, how did you first get involved? I’ve been aware of the HBAA since my mother, Angie Mason, became association chair 16 years ago. I was lucky to grow up around influencers who raised my awareness of the industry, the association and those in it. I joined the events committee temporarily about five years ago to deliver production for the Annual Kick Off & Dinner, where I got to experience being part of the HBAA team. It was at a time where Wolf & White was still in its infancy, so I was unable to commit the time to be a dedicated member of a committee, but last January I was able to apply for the position of events chair. Over the first six months of holding the position I was approached by the board to ask if I would be interested in also applying for the vacancy of vice chair, and was thrilled when my application was successful. How would you summarise your first six months on the board? It has been a whirlwind. Time flies by in our industry and I can’t believe six months has already passed. Since joining the board we have achieved so much, committing to taking time out to be with each other for days at a time (which is a huge show of passion and commitment when we www.conference-news.co.uk all have day jobs and are volunteering our time) to deep dive reviews of the association, to go back to grassroots and look at where we are now and where we want to be in the future. We are launching the results of our review and our future initiatives at our 2020 Annual Kick Off, so watch this space. Trade associations are having to evolve to stay relevant to their members, what is the HBAA doing to engage its members? I couldn’t agree more. An association should exist for its members and be their voice, but also deliver and support them in areas they highlight as being needed. We need to be a pillar of guiding light, experience, knowledge and industry access for our membership. We would become stale and irrelevant if we did not continuously review who we are, what we offer and who we are doing this for. We must keep our fingers on the pulse and be at the front, never playing catch up in the industry. An example of a key event programme on the HBAA calendar is our Agency Engagement Meetings, where agents come together to discuss business and industry- critical topics and share best practice, and where we engage expertise from external professionals to support their knowledge.