by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Reasons to be grateful Today I’m grateful for Freddie White. As part of my new social distancing routine, I’m trying to identify, each day, something that I’m grateful for. This morning I woke up around 6:20 and it came to me immediately: I’m grateful… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE A new Ireland product for a new audience, a single hotel contract for city wide conferences and a clarion call around sustained, consistent and wide reaching sustainability – just 3 highlights from this year’s Business Tourism conference that saw over 200 MICE professionals from… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer SITE & Managing Partner, SoolNua Incentive travel is self-liquidating In the past, when pitching a company on the merits of an incentive travel programme, the clincher would always be that it’s self liquidating, ie, technically it costs you nothing as it’s paid for from the incremental revenues generated by… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer, SITE & Managing Partner, SoolNua Radical Disruption in the hospitality sector Lokal Hotel in Old Town Philadelphia is yet another example of the radical disruption that’s been tearing up the hospitality sector ever since Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky used digital technology to rent floor space in their apartment… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer, SITE & Managing Partner, SoolNua The initial release of the Incentive Travel Industry Index took place during IMEX Americas back in September 2019 but for numbers nerds and data daleks it continues to provide rich pickings. It also offers up some great insights for incentive travel professionals working in… Read more »
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 »