by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Following months of relative calm, fractious chatter regarding the value of Destination Management Companies / Consultants (DMCs) has rendered the waters of our industry choppy and turbulent again. This chatter has followed the publication of a White Paper on the relationship between Core PCOs travelling with Association clients from… 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 The Association of Irish Professional Conference Organisers (AIPCO) 4th annual conference was held at the beautiful Lyrath Estate, Kilkenny gathering almost 200 MICE professionals around the theme “How to nail your sale”. For the third year running I moderated proceedings and this time was honoured to work with such… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua On Products and Brands When Arthur Guinness brewed his famous stout for the first time back in 1759 little did he know that 256 years later 1m people would flock to his factory simply to visit. The same for Thomas Phillips (Bushmills), John Jameson, D.E. Williams (Tullamore Dew) and… Read more »
by Padraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua I felt sorry for our hosts. Two years working on an event to bring some of the most powerful Professional Conference Organisers in the world to your city and there’s a deluge that wouldn’t look out of place in the recent Hollywood blockbuster, Noah. What’s generally an idyllic alpine… Read more »
by Padraic Gilligan, Vice President, Industry Relations, MCI Nasty attack of FOMO At a certain point yesterday that dreaded FOMO syndrome took hold and I embarked on a mad dash around the various stages and pitching areas in a frenzy of fear. Maybe this is what looters feel like. There was simply too much good… Read more »
“Budapest is knocking on heaven’s door” by Padraic Gilligan When the long haired buskers in the underpass are playing complex counterpoints by Bartok and Bernstein rather than “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan then you know you’re in Budapest. This is a city with a profound intellectual and cultural DNA which it carries naturally,… Read more »
by Padraic Gilligan For many of us in the Meetings Industry the major dread of any trip to Asia is the knowledge that most conversations about our business will be liberally peppered with “MICE”. And we’re not talking small rodents here, we talking acronyms – meetings, incentives, congresses and events. Despite our best efforts in… Read more »
“Sao Paulo – the Heart of the City” With due apologies to Ms Austen, it is a “truth universally acknowledged” that a man measures everything in relation to himself. Thus there is no such thing as big and small per se. Everything is either bigger or smaller than what you are or have yourself. I… Read more »