The 'Boardroom Ready' session last night was proved the most emotive and interactive to date, kindly hosted by Millennium Mayfair Hotel, with guest speaker, Sunny Crouch OBE.

Sunny took the audience through her "ME PROJECT" approach which included recognising ambition, identifying paths to success, investment in one’s self and charting success. She encouraged AWTE members to serve on committees where influence is an opportunity, making speeches and presentations regularly, to apply for non-executive boards where you can introduce and champion initiatives - and above all, to let others know of your intended career path as women do not undertake self-promotion. She recommended that we flirt with our future!

Preparation, discipline and general management are good grounds, says Sunny, but above all you must familiarise yourself with the financial agenda as without it you will sink. She quoted American statistics: the most important factor is how you are brought up by your father, and gave various examples of women whose lives were affected by this approach.

Sunny is currently a Non-Executive Director of Thurrock Thames Gateway Development Corporation, Places for People Housing & Regeneration Group, Island Health & Trust and a Governor of the University of East London, plus Chair of Capital Projects Group, overseeing £200m of new development over a period of 6 years. Along with her many achievements for being an inspiration to women, she was awarded an OBE for business, regeneration and tourism.

It was a brilliant evening and went down storm. There was so much content last night - we could not close the meeting for questions ... even at 9pm!

AWTE member and Managing Director of GfK Ascent, Sarah Smalley, shared some of the most recent insights into the UK leisure sector from the statistical evidence gathered by Gfk Ascent. This was then coupled with some direct consumer feedback from the British Travel Awards annual consumer survey which is sent out with voting forms for the BTAs. Both Sarah Smalley and Lorraine Barnes Burton, CEO of BTA, got together after discovering that Gfk's actual booking information for 2009 was validating the consumer intentions from the BTA 2008 survey. A full report was created with these consumer intentions and industry actual figures which is available from BTA.

Highlights of the presentation:

The first 3 weeks of January 2010 were not promising, however, the last week of January going into February showed far better promise, with an 11% increase on 2009. Agents are strong, especially on early bookings, however direct bookings are on the up.

Gfk Ascent continues to gather the information from the industry to help organisations strategise for the future. BTA will be reviewing their questions for the 2010 consumer survey and will annually announce their findings to the industry, again to help with planning and marketing for future sales based on the consumers' intentions.