by Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer, SITE & Managing Partner, SoolNua This is a blog post about travel agents and incentive travel. Maria Lenhart’s article in Skift on whether “leisure advisors can crack the incentive travel market” forced me call “time out” on a frenetic current work load to return, after a few weeks’ absence,… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE To pitch or not to pitch? For the past 2 weeks my twitter feed has been dominated by dialogue, discussion and debate around “pitching” and whether it’s a game that any self respecting #eventprof or agency, big or small, should play. The conversations were… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer, SITE & Managing Partner, SoolNua DMCs in the 1990s When you’re deeply immersed in a particular silo or business sector, that’s really all you see. During the early years of Delaney Marketing when Patrick and I were a struggling DMC, all chatter was about client going direct, DMC getting… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer, SITE & Managing Partner, SoolNua Top 3 criteria in destination selection Outside of ICCA, there’s no official or universally accepted ranking for destinations according to their position on the MICE hierarchy. That said, we all kind of know where we belong or sit in that constellation of destination planets… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua and Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Rosewood – channelling “new luxury” I first encountered the Rosewood brand almost 15 years ago in Dallas Texas. I stayed at the Mansion on Turtle Creek during a committee meeting for the Young Presidents’ Organisation (YPO) Family University that I was privileged to project… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE NOTE: This post is even more relevant in the context of recent news on the Wall Street Journal of the cancellation by Financial Advisor, Charles Schawb, of its long established incentive travel programme. The Incentive Research Foundation published this article in response. I was… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Incentive Travel in Search of New Objectives Amongst the many interesting outcomes from the recent Incentive Travel Industry Index (ITII) jointly conducted by Society for Incentive Travel Executives (SITE), Financial & Insurance Conference Professionals (FICP) and Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) was the change detected… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Business Events – is it tourism or economic development? The debate around whether Business Events should be categorised under “Tourism” or “Economic Development” has been on-going for a decade or more and hasn’t reached any finality or, truth be known, consensus. At a JMIC… Read more »
Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE The Italian author Cesare Pavese famously stated that “travel is a brutality”. He said it decades ago before security lines in London Stansted or passport control in Miami or the flight delays and missed connections that leave me writing this at 3am in Ataturk Airport,… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Incentive Travel Industry Index 2018 Last week Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE), Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) and Financial & Insurance Conference Professionals (FICP) released their eponymous joint survey for the Incentive Travel Industry. Another welcome example of associations working together for the greater… Read more »