Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Conversations at IMEX, Frankfurt, May 2024 In a recent session at IMEX Frankfurt, I had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion with fellow business events professionals Irina Graf (The MICE Blog), Gregory Baur (Zurich Convention Bureau) and Marvin Zemp (Luzern Convention Bureau). The… Read more »
Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Business Events: a USD$1.6 trillion industry Last May the Events Industry Council published the latest iteration of its Global Economic Significance of Business Events and valued business events’ contribution to global GDP at USD$1.6 trillion. This figure, in fact, would rank business events as the… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE More questions than answers Last year at SITE we celebrated the 50th anniversary of our formation in 1973. One takeaway for me after a golden year of celebrating incentive travel excellence was the realisation that, in 50 years, incentive travel hasn’t really changed that… Read more »
Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua and Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Turning Adversity into Opportunity Late of Lonely Planet, Oliver Smith found himself out of a job due to the pandemic. He quickly turned adversity into opportunity by visiting ancient pilgrim sites in the UK, eventually monetising his experiences in the form of a new publication,… Read more »
Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer, SITE & Managing Partner, SoolNua AI is not new on the Wild Atlantic Way AI is not at all new in Ireland, at least not along the Wild Atlantic Way or in Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands. Since the 1940s, it has been a thing in rural Ireland where I have deep… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Pandemic in Dublin Deserted streets. #WFH. Skies free from planes. Weather. “Modern Family”. Zoom calls. Neighbourhood walks. Entire families on bicycles. Where the Crawdads sing. Bird song. Coffee lines. Webinars. Sourdough bread. “The Americans”. Quizzes on Zoom. That’s my random list of memories from… Read more »
Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua and Chief Marketing Officer, SITE “When she was bad, she was horrid” There’s a touch of the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead about incentive travel. You know the one “when she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad she… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer, SITE & Managing Partner, SoolNua Prognosis for recovery of Incentive Travel Maybe it’s a lame analogy but here goes anyway. Today’s incentive travel industry is like an elite athlete who has just done her cruciate ligament. When the crunch happens she knows it’s serious but hopes, at the same… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Will Covid-19 kill Incentive travel? Part of me loves the speculation, the permutations and combinations. The “if this, then that” logic that we indulge in on a daily basis. I’m referring, of course, to the endless chatter around what meetings 3.0 or incentives 3.0… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Who knew? Covid-19? Nobody saw this one coming. Not our cleverest crystal ball gazers. Not our sharpest soothsayers. Our industry predictions for 2020 and beyond made no reference to a virus and, in January, even when it ran through China, like bind weed in… Read more »