Dear colleagues,

I am writing these lines as I have just arrived in Singapore for a few days, where we will have a joint meeting of top representatives from the AEO, SISO, SACEOS, and UFI, to align around initiatives and projects going forward. We have built a packed programme for this “Joint Leadership Summit” – around industry dialogue and advocacy. We will meet with representatives from countries across South East Asia, to push for a realignment of travel protocols and procedures.

The events sectors in APAC has outpaced other regions in many metrics during the past 10 years, in terms of both size and number of events, and governments across APAC have supported these events. We hope that we can bring attention and awareness to the significant and critical role that business events play in driving global commerce. Our message is that we have already seen this “building back better” happening in the others areas of the world, and we look forward to working with the governments and industries in South East Asia to once again hold safe and successful events.

At UFI, driven by our President, we have intensified such dialogue with governments and other advocacy work. If you have not done so already, I encourage you to watch the conversations we are having with government ministers from around the world in the “Global Policy Leadership Series”. Also, after having been active in Brussels since 2012 with the “European Exhibition Industry Alliance”, UFI is also one of the associations funding and supporting the “Exhibitions & Conference Alliance” in Washington, DC. This week’s advocacy work in Singapore now adds an additional focus on Asia.

Once back from Singapore later this week, the focus will shift even more towards our UFI Global Congress, taking place in early November face to face in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Please do join the over 200 colleagues who have signed up already – the Dutch authorities have waived quarantines for fully vaccinated travellers, and we have been granted an exemption from quarantines for non vaccinated UFI members as well, pending certain protocols. You will find all the information about that as well as the programme and the list of participants at uficongress.org.

And finally: Thank you for your positive feedback on the new format of UFI Info! The team will continue to work on the format as we go forward.

Best regards

Kai Hattendorf