Tony Rogers is a consultant specialising in conferences, business tourism / business visits and events, and destination marketing and management. Until August 2009 he worked as Project Director for Eventia, the events industry trade association, and prior to this he spent 19½ years as Chief Executive of the British Association of Conference Destinations (BACD). He oversaw the successful integration of BACD into Eventia which took effect from 1st January 2009.
Tony is also an honorary member of the Association of British Professional Conference Organisers (ABPCO), an association he managed for eight years; a Visiting Fellow at Leeds Metropolitan University’s UK Centre for Events Management; and author of several books on the international conference industry including ‘Marketing Destinations and Venues for Conferences, Conventions and Business Events’ (written jointly with Rob Davidson of the University of Westminster) and ‘Conferences and Conventions: A Global Industry’, both published by Elsevier and both translated into Chinese (the latter is also due to be translated into Russian in 2011). He has also been an external examiner at the University of Westminster.
Tony is a regular speaker at conferences and events in the UK, and at a number of UK universities and colleges. He has also presented at conferences in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Malaysia, Malta, Monaco, The Netherlands, South Africa, and Spain.
In 1999 Tony won Meeting & Incentive Travel’s ‘Personality of the Year’ award and, in 2007, he achieved 9th position in Conference & Incentive Travel’s ‘Power 50’ listing of the top 50 people who contributed significantly to the development of the industry in the previous 12 months.
Before joining BACD in 1989, Tony held positions as: a careers adviser; a business economist in a local authority economic development department; an area secretary with a world development charity.