Elman Wall 'creating history' with all-female conference line-up

The eighth Elman Wall Travel Directors’ Summit will take place on October 16 at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium in London.

The conference, which carries the theme Winds of Change, will feature a host of speakers from both inside and outside the travel sector.

Elman Wall is also inviting 10 travel companies to nominate a “Rising Female Star” to attend as a delegate.

Opening the event will be Ayesha Hazarika MBE, a Scottish comedian, broadcaster, political commentator and Evening Standard columnist to talk about “the state of the nation”.

Other speakers from outside travel include Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and Sally Whittle, a journalist and founder of Trips 100, which matches travel companies with the right social media influencers.

Travel figures speaking include Abta’s Victoria Bacon; former sales and business director of The Travel Corporation Ruth Hilton; Joanna Kolatsis, director of strategic advisory firm Themis Advisory and Debbie Marshall, founder of Silver Travel Advisor.

They will be joined by Suzanne Horner, chief executive of Gray Dawes; Amrit Singh, managing director of tour operator TransIndus; Radha Vyas, co-founder of adventure travel firm Flashpack and Katie Waddington, director of Zenith Holidays.

The new chair of the Family Holiday Association, Philippa Harris, will also be on stage with sessions moderated by Elman Wall’s Claire Steiner.

The idea for the all-female line-up came from Deborah Potts, director of summit advisory and Elman Wall’s M&A arm.

Potts said: “All of us at the Elman Wall Group are very proud to have created what we believe is a UK travel industry first.

“Our summit for 180 chief executives and managing directors of privately owned travel businesses will, as usual, cover a challenging array of relevant business topics. What’s different this year is that all our speakers will be women.”

Jonathan Wall, managing director of Elman Wall, added: “I’m excited that our prestigious Travel Directors’ Summit will be truly creating history this year and pleased, too, that our own board recently promoted two of our female staff, Laura Quirke and Karen Gill, to associate directorships. Both of them will be joining our impressive female speaker line-up.”