'MICE Conversations'. In this episode I talk with Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner at SoolNua and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at SITE Global. SoolNua is a Dublin-based specialist in business events, advising destinations, DMOs, hotels, agencies and associations. Many people will know Pádraic from his days at Ovation on MCI.

More about Pádraic Gilligan, SoolNua and SITE Global.
https://twitter.com/Padraicino
https://soolnua.com/about-us/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/padraicgilligan/
https://padraicino.com/
https://www.siteglobal.com/blog/meet-p-draic-gilligan,-site-chief-marketing-officer

Research mentioned in this episode:
https://www.incentiveindex.com/
https://www.siteglobal.com/page/corporate-insites

This interview was recorded Wednesday May 5th 2021.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/BGYmeo-lpWU

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome.
00:52 - How did you get into the MICE industry?
02:24 - The name SoolNua?
02:57 - From practitioner to consultant?
04:45 - Is hybrid here to stay?
16:18 - Fortune 500 research.
20:00 - Incentive travel is the most measurable within the MICE acronym.
21:49 - Destination trends. Perceived safety.
28:15 - European trends?
29:46 - Where to find the Fortune 500 research?
30:38 - Remote working and digital nomads.
34:05 - Is the sustainable trend sustainable?
39:00 - Government and the MICE industry working together.
42:00 - SITE is back. First event in Colorado.
43:11 - SoolNua. Working from home or back to the office? A blended future.
46:00 - Outro, thank you, more info.

Transcript:
- So, hello and welcome to another MICE conversation, my name is Michael Collins from TravelMedia.ie in Dublin. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Pádraic Gilligan who is managing partner at SoolNua, a Dublin-based specialist in business events, advising destinations, DMOs, hotels, agencies, associations, and anybody who'll listen. Pádraic is also the CMO of SITE and many people will know Pádraic from his days at Ovation on MCI, so Pádraic thank you very much for joining us this morning.

- Thanks Michael, delighted to be here.

- So I know you've got quite a checkered past I did a bit of research and digging I found out that you're in the band and that you started life as a teacher. So I wonder, if you could first maybe tell the people watching and listening how you got into the MICE industry?

- Well, I suppose true kind of, yeah impecunious radius is the kind of the the reason and teaching doesn't pay very well and there's absolutely no money in performing. So, I was a kind of a, a very very poor father of, well growing family probably four at the time, became six eventually. So as a very poor father I realized that there wasn't sufficient kind of funds putting bread on the table, on a weekly basis. So, I decided to try and leverage another kind of string I had to my bow which is my ability to speak Italian. And I worked with Italians visiting Ireland in the 80's as a tour guide. That discovered the, the great world of incoming tourism and discovered the brilliant kind of privilege of being able to talk about your country, to people who were actually really interested in listening to it, which made a kind of a change from teaching where you're talking to bored 15 year olds who really don't want to hear about "Ode to a Nightingale" by Keats.

- So I suppose the, the love of travel and Ireland got you into it but you've achieved a huge amount since then, obviously you know, with your Ovation on MCI days and now obviously, SoolNua. First of all, I tried to dig around and I couldn't find it could you explain to me the derivation of the name SoolNua?

- Well, okay, so it's actually, it's two Irish words as Sool meanin