by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Incentive travel, chief amongst the four elements that comprise MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, events) has traditionally been synonymous with luxury. This has been the case for decades. It stemmed from a shared word cloud that included such terms as exclusive, expensive, elite and extraordinary. Add in extravagant, opulent and… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Today @Supergreybeard and I spoke with two corporate meeting and event planners about return on investment aka ROI. It was a fascinating conversation with two highly experienced professionals from global organisations. By the end of the telephone conversation, however, I knew we were no further down the line with ROI today than… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua I’ve written extensively on this blog about Destination Management Companies (DMCs) and how the business model for DMCs has been changing almost as fast as governments in Italy and policies in the Trump Administration. Over the past while @Supergreybeard and I have been thinking about the related, adjacent world… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Alternative Facts Would eventprofs tell their own mother a barefaced lie? Well, yes if they were European or, to be more precise, if they were from Prague. In a survey undertaken this week of Prague-based meetings and events professionals almost one third of the respondents admitted to SoolNua that… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua The Hospitality Model v the Transactional Model @Supergreybread and I had a fascinating conversation with a legacy hotelier recently who shared this interesting story with us. Consultants were brought in to analyse and categorise the service ethos across a range of hotels in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. They… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Inflection Point for Global Hotels We’re right in the middle of a curious inflection point for global hotels. Just when we were about to declare the victory of the independents over the global chains, Marriott buys Starwood and Accor buys Fairmont to create two global behemoths with almost 50 individual brands between… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Occasionally I indulge myself by posting on something unrelated to MICE or Business Events but this post has been a hardy annual since I started the blog. It’s the annual “best albums” post where I dress up as a rock journalist and list, in no particular rank or order, 10 new albums that I… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, Soolnua That MICE thing again Every time I use the term MICE to describe Business Events I feel there’s an angry torch-carrying mob about to lynch me and hang me from the highest tree. That the mob contains some of my best MICE friends like Vancouver’s amazing Claire Smith, only… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua By now most meetings professionals are on social media with Linkedin, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Linkedin has endless groups for meeting professionals and many of them are excellent with great content being shared and useful contacts being made on a daily basis. Instagram, too, with its strong optical orientation, is a… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua “Let me take you down as I’m going to Strawberry Fields. Nothing is real.” It’s ironic, as I leave Las Vegas, that the theme for this week’s blog post is authenticity. In the constellation of words that might be used to describe this astonishing town, authenticity is unlikely to… Read more »