HQ #117 / 'Building Resilience While Climbing the Event Mountain'

Given the track-record of recent years with successive health, energy and military crises, few people in our sector predicted that 2025 would be a quiet walk in the park. Coming directly from a global pandemic and entering a technological revolution at the pace of two regional wars, international organisations and the business events sector realised that in order to establish building blocks for their members they had to return to the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA) mantra.

Risk management has evolved from something ‘nice to have’ to a necessity that guarantees an organisation's survival and success. Our industry exists in and is shaped by this broader and more turbulent scenario. Associations such as EASL, the European Association for the Study of the Liver, have changed this paradigm with a strong focus on local players, greater media exposure and more emphasis on public health from their impact project (page 8).

In another in-depth interview, the state of the nightlife economy is dire across Europe, following a pandemic crisis that drove away its audience and has lasted due to rising rents, gentrification and demographic changes. In this issue, HQ spoke to the vice-president of the International Nightlife Association to find out more about the state of the sector and how to find solutions in times of crisis (page 11).

For its part, Headquarters travelled to Vancouver last February to take a closer look at the Invictus Games, providing a live demonstration of the city's inclusive events strategy (page 20). Following an internal merger that transformed the operational structure of London's business and events promotion, we also spoke to London & Partners to find out how a marketing agency became a social enterprise that supports residents and businesses (page 34).