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A story for (Last) Christmas from Switzerland

by Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer, SITE & Founder, SoolNua Movies and Tourism When I worked as an Italian-speaking tour guide in Ireland in the late ’80s and early ’90s, one of my set-piece commentaries was on movies shot in Ireland. I would mention The Quiet Man (1952, starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara), Un Taxi Mauve (or Purple Taxi, from 1977, which brought thousands of…

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Macao - Asia's rising star for Business Events

by Pádraic Gilligan, Co-founder, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Macao & Las Vegas Las Vegas casinos buzz with high-fives, loud cheers, and a steady pour of free-flowing adult beverages. In contrast, Macao’s casinos exude an air of quiet intensity, where focused patrons sip water in hushed concentration. What’s high-spirited entertainment in one destination is a deadly serious pursuit…

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Travellers or Tourists? The True Essence of Incentive Travel

by Pádraic Gilligan, Co-founder SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE The origins of SITE – the only professional association dedicated exclusively to incentive travel – are well-documented. We even have living witnesses to its founding meeting at the Hotel Americana on December 3, 1973. That said, the roots of incentive travel itself as a corporate performance-enhancing tool remain somewhat…

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In Memoriam: Bob Moony - "way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine … ”

by Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer, SITE & Co-Founder, SoolNua Consulting There’s a line in Arthur Miller’s great tragedy Death of a Salesman, where Willy Loman, the play’s main character,  is described as “a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine … ” Whenever I saw Bob Moony, that line would come to mind. Bob had the smile, and the shoeshine; he had the…

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Rethinking Incentive Travel in a Changing Social Landscape - lessons from Bowling Alone

by Pádraic Gilligan, Chief Marketing Officer, SITE The leadership of most professional associations—SITE included—are likely familiar with Bowling Alone (2000), Bob Putnam’s seminal work on America’s declining social capital. Association leaders turned to Putnam’s research to better understand the precipitous drop in membership numbers. The Decline of Social Capital: Putnam’s Timeless…

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Free time is king: How incentive travel is embracing personal freedom

by Pádraic Gilligan, Co-founder, SoolNua Consulting & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE At IMEX America this year, SITE and our partner, the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF), launched the 2024 Incentive Travel Index (ITI) to a packed room of eager attendees in Las Vegas. Each year, the ITI gives us a clear snapshot of where incentive travel is headed, and this year was no exception. For me, one…

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Beyond Short-Term Vision: Preparing the Business Events Industry for an Unpredictable Future

by Pádraic Gilligan, Co-founder, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE There are two terminals now at Dublin airport as annual passenger numbers rush headlong towards a controversial 40m. Like many “legacy” airports, it’s a sprawling campus, with extensions, new wings, spurs and satellites added over the years to deal with the dramatic exponential growth. If you’re on a Ryanair flight, your…

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SITE at Fontainebleau, Miami Beach - where two classics collide

by Pádraic Gilligan, Founder of SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Since its triumphant debut in 1954, Fontainebleau Miami Beach has had more work done than your favourite Instagram influencer! We’re talking body contouring, tummy tucks, augmentations, Brazilians—you name it. Not to mention the countless facelifts. Yet, through it all, its original curves, as envisioned by modernist…

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Why not start the incentive travel program in the destination and ditch the air?

by Pádraic Gilligan, Co-founder, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE For many years now, the Incentive Travel Index (ITI) has been unveiling fascinating insights into the evolving landscape of incentive travel, shedding light on its current state, underlying motivations, and potential future trends. Traditionally, its annual report has focused on core themes such as industry growth, budget…

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New Incentive Travel Opportunities for DMOs

by Pádraic Gilligan, Founder, SoolNua Marketing & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Incentive Travel Research In the latest Incentive Travel Index1, buyers once again highlighted their preference for “new destinations not used before” as the top choice for future incentive programs, a trend that mirrors the results from 2023. This preference isn���t just a fleeting fancy—it was chosen twice as often…

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Lessons from ethical retail for incentive travel professionals

Pádraic Gilligan, Founder, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Incentive travel professionals learning from others I’ve always been pleasantly surprised by how much we can learn from business professionals outside of our own bubble. I remember buying a car a number of years ago from a Toyota dealer and immediately incorporating some of her brilliantly subtle sales techniques into my own…

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Leading or being led? Client relations for incentive travel professionals today

by Pádraic Gilligan, Founder, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Incentive travel professionals should adopt a consultancy approach, addressing critical issues like sustainability, to lead the industry forward and align with evolving stakeholder expectations and corporate practices. We are incentive travel professionals Google may have transformed us into amateur diagnosticians, yet when…

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Incentives on the edge: St John's, Newfoundland

by Pádraic Gilligan, Founder, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Stay Strange St John’s I saw a t shirt in the window of one of St John’s many independent retailers that said: “Stay Strange St John’s”, a variation on the inspirational “Keep Austin weird” tagline. Following my week in Canada’s most eastern provincial capital, I’m saying St John’s is neither strange nor weird but, in…

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"To infinity and beyond!" - in memoriam Didier Scaillet.

by Pádraic Gilligan, Founder, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE “To infinity and beyond” was a saying that Didier often used during his tenure as CEO of SITE when I served as his CMO. It’s half quoted in his last post on Facebook, from Christmas day, 2023 when he says “Merry Christmas to all my loved ones … and beyond”. Thinking about that in the aftermath of Didier’s death makes me…

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Is it still raining in Gleneagles? My first visit to Scotland's incentive masterpiece

by Pádraic Gilligan, Founder SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Gleneagles – an incentive travel classic As July unfolds in Ireland and the weather gods continues to think it’s March, I’m left wondering whether it’s still raining in Gleneagles, that “glorious playground” that my son Colm and I visited earlier this year? Despite my decades in the incentive travel industry, prior to our…

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The way we travel now - implications of latest McKinsey research for incentive travel

by Pádraic Gilligan, Founder, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE Recent research from McKinsey into the way we travel now is crammed with exciting, actionable insights for organisers of incentive travel programs. While the McKinsey research focuses on leisure, the trends here tend to replicate themselves in incentive travel as, after all, the travel reward is specifically designed to…

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Incentive travel - what we can learn from children

by Pádraic Gilligan, Founder, SoolNua & Chief Marketing Officer, SITE This post explores the “Growing Up in Ireland” study, highlighting how travel is the top aspiration among 13-year-olds, especially girls and those from higher-income families. It underscores the importance of travel experiences and offers insights for incentive travel professionals on gender and socio-economic trends. Growing…