John Hooker, Managing Partner of AddingValue Consulting has over 20 years experience in the HET industry.

I love this business.

From my early days with SAGA, to management of international trade delegations, through to the integrated agency world, my entire career’s been immersed in the hospitality, events and travel industries.

For 20 fantastic and formative years I worked for TTO/tmo/BI, where I managed successful account teams, became MD of Creative Event Management and rose to become Director of Event Management, honing my Change Management skills along the way.

It was an amazing time for opportunities and no more so than in Dubai, where I moved to help establish the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. Here I managed a series of change programmes, including the implementation of an ERP system.

I undertook the challenge of restructuring the commercial conference operation of The Institution of Civil Engineers upon my return to the UK, before re-entering the agency world at THA, where I helped to restructure the group.

Having spent the last 8 years focussed on Change Management, heading up AddingValue’s Consulting Practice seems a perfectly natural progression because, while it capitalises on my broad business experience, it also enables me to put something back into the industry.

And that’s important to me.