I meet Lesley Williams a week before she is due to step down as the head of business tourism at Marketing Edinburgh. She makes time to see me although she’s clearly very busy in preparation for handing over a welter of notes to her yet-to-be-named successor. The term ‘de-mob happy’ has not even registered, as the tasks on her to-do list leave her little time to enjoy the kind of light duties you might expect for someone who has served in a busy role for the last seven years.

Williams is well-known on the business tourism circuit in Scotland and has witnessed some big changes in the events industry since joining Marketing Edinburgh in 2010, or Edinburgh Convention Bureau as it was known then. We start the conversation by reflecting on the recent memorandum of understanding signed between Edinburgh Airport and Beijing Capital Airport in China; whilst still early days in terms of a direct flight route between the two cities, she is clear that it is another important step in the process of establishing a link, which she thinks would be “amazing” for the city.

It’s a significant development but I’m there to ask Williams, perhaps unfairly, to sum up some of the key milestones of her time in post. She takes a deep intake of breath, mentally scanning a list of achievements which includes multiple awards, some of whose trophies are proudly displayed on the window sill opposite the table as we talk.

“For me, one of the biggest things is how we’ve moved from being simply a convention bureau – which was very much ‘we’ll find you a venue, we’ll find you a hotel,’ to becoming a bigger part of conferences with a focus on legacy, public engagement, and making connections between the right people in the city.”

Williams is also duly proud of Edinburgh’s rise in the international ICCA conference rankings report to 27 among global cities and, of course, the investment into the city’s convention product, which has included the expansion of the EICC, and significant investment into the likes of Assembly Rooms, NMS, Sheraton, Waldorf, Radisson, G&V, and Edinburgh Principal. That’s not to mention, also, her team’s ‘overachievement’ in adding gross value to the city, all against a backdrop of challenging economic and political upheaval.

But Williams is also cognisant of how the conversation has changed around the impact of events; in previous years conferences have been judged, in economic terms, around the spend of delegates on hotels, restaurants and bars and the like. Now it’s all about ‘additionality’, looking at the wider value conferences and conventions create to the economy.

“Cities are realising that there’s more to conferences than economic impact – we always used to, and still do a certain extent, talk about the fact we’ve generated so many conferences of an economic value of ‘x’ but when a conference comes here it’s actually the relationships that are built, the collaboration and showcasing of a particular field of expertise in the city and the fact that it’s an investment opportunity,” she says.

“We’ve also done really well in terms of extending the membership programme to include our rewards passport; we’ve brought corporate partners on board, who we do campaigns with and our commercial revenue has been relatively successful. That’s something completely new that didn’t exist in ECB or Marketing Edinburgh in its early days, so there’s been quite a lot of change.”

Williams will no doubt be missed at Marketing Edinburgh although she is looking forward to the new challenge as she makes the transition into the private sector, working for an international consultancy which specialises in growing the MICE industry. She is set to retain her position as chair of the UK Chapter of the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA), and has pledged to help Marketing Edinburgh transition through her departure but she leaves the organisation in good health for the future.