It feels incredible to reflect that it is over two years, since we started enduring the pandemic conditions that have done so much to blight travel. One of the key roles of an IUMI president is to get out and meet members and industry affiliates, and this activity has inevitably ended up being shunted online for most of this period.

Nonetheless, the world is slowly coming out of its travel hibernation and I am finally able to get ‘back on the road’, and have the opportunity to engage with our key stakeholders in more sociable settings. I mentioned in the last newsletter that our Winter Meeting was held on a hybrid basis. More recently, I have had the pleasure of participating in the Marine Insurance London, the International Salvage Union and the Cefor conferences, followed by the Marine Forum in South Africa. These events had largely been delayed from 2020, so it feels really good to have been able to re-engage with these important industry activities.

As I write this article, full preparations are under way ahead of the IUMI Asia Forum, to be held this year in Mumbai in June – the first such event we have been able to hold since our last such Forum in Shanghai in 2019.

All of this will be followed by the IUMI annual conference in Chicago in September, the first such event to be held in a ‘physical setting’ since Toronto, also in 2019. Registration is open so please get your reservation made as soon as possible.