With the school holidays upon us I always feel this is the quiet before storm of hopefully a busy Autumn.  Life in the HBAA is similar and during the summer we are busy making preparations for the many forthcoming events.  Much planning is taking place for the Annual Forum, the Golf Day and many other activities.

The HBAA 2010 Forum is the 8th and 9th September at the Holiday Inn Stratford upon Avon and the registration website is almost ready to go live.  This year’s Forum is set to be better than ever with a full line up of high profile industry speakers, opportunity for debate and the chance to discuss industry topics with other industry professionals.  More details are included in this month's exchange.

The Forum is also about celebrating achievement and the HBAA Excellence Awards will be presented along with the HBAA Training Academy awards.

Now in their third year, the HBAA Awards recognise excellence and the promotion of best practice in the hotel booking agency sector and this year sees the launch of a new category “Agent of the Year” to be voted on line by corporate buyers.

Chris Parnham, Zibrant’s Managing Director (Operations), has been elected Chair of the newly formed Memberships Committee.

This new role has been created by the merger of the Membership (agents) and Partner (venues) committees, and for the first time focuses on delivering, in conjunction, the shared and specific objectives of each group.

The new programme on Channel 4, Undercover Boss, sees high-flying executives take extraordinary measures to ensure that their companies are fighting fit by infiltrating their own businesses.

David Clarke, CEO of hotel chain Best Western, went undercover as a new recruit ‘Andy Green’ and discovered a mixture of results. It was the front line facing staff that showed extreme dedication to the hotels, which often went unnoticed and unrewarded. After seeing how much his staff worked for the love of their jobs he realised that his most important assets are his front line people.