MICE Conversations: a podcast for the Meetings, Incentive Travel, Conferences and Events industry
MICE Conversations: a podcast for the Meetings, Incentive Travel, Conferences and Events industry
#8: 'MICE Conversations' - Pádraic Gilligan, SoolNua and SITE Global
'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
(upbeat music)- 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 Pdraic 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. Pdraic is also the CMO of SITE and many people will know Pdraic from his days at Ovation on MCI, so Pdraic 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 meaning an eye and nua meaning you, so a new eye or a new vision a new perspective, a new way of looking at things. And so that's, that's the, the derivation we're just using obviously an anglicised spelling and to make it a bit easier far for people who are not Irish to actually say it or pronounce it.- And then tell me in more recent years, you've moved from being a practitioner to a consultant. Have you enjoyed that move? Is it more challenging? Do you find it, do you miss the old days? And how has it, especially, in this COVID world?- I think if you run events, you always miss it you always miss it. So I feel like, if that has been part of your career like there's nothing sort of as exhilarating as running an event and I suppose I'd like it a little bit to kind of performing on stage with a band and you do a lot of rehearsing and then you, you kind of bring all of that rehearsal into whatever performance you're doing in front of a live audience. So it's, there's a lot of adrenaline there's a lot of them high octane there's a lot of kind of excitement and so on. And when you're talking about events as opposed to running them, you do miss all of that. I'm delighted that in my role with SIZE I actually am still involved in events I'm still on the, let's say the back of house team in terms of putting an event together and therefore seeing the event coming to realization when it eventually goes live. So well I haven't lost it completely, but yeah, I think any type of, kind of live or sort of performance environment that you might be in and I also kind of bring teaching into that as well you're standing in a live environment in front of a class and in a way you're performing there. If that has been in your past and now you're not doing it anymore because you're sitting at a desk writing an article or whenever you do miss it, there's no doubt.- But that prompts the question that in today's world we can't actually do it because there are very few live events taking place. We're now, in a virtual world or a hybrid world from many people. Does that then mean that you think that we will go back to full on live events when we possibly can? Or do you think the hybrid is here to stay?- Yeah, it's the $64,000 Question and I think, you know, I changed my mind on this by the day. And although overall, I feel, you know that this particular series is about MICE so meetings, incentives, conferences and events and we looked them together into that kind of acronym because it's an easy way for us, to talk about what has many similarities, but also many differences. And I think when we look at each individual element of MICE, I think the story in the future will be actually a little bit different. So if I take my own sector which is the IMS incentive travel, that's not going anywhere other than back to life, you can't actually, achieve what incentive travel achieves which is in many cases, a kind of a transformative type of experience because that's what travel does travel transforms. And then corporations make that kind of transformative experience available to high-performing employees in and through whole incentive travel process so I don't think that's going anywhere other than back into a live environment. I think there will be limitations for a period of time around where we go and how far we go but we're going back to life. If I take another of the acronyms if I take another of the letters of the acronym, say the meetings part I think it might be a little bit different. You know, corporate meetings I think have been proven now to be able to take place virtually and outside of a live environment at least some of them. And I think what we will move from is will move from a situation where, you know most corporate interactions, which involved some sort of that negotiation or some kind of a training program or whatever have tended to be in a live environment and I think over the last 15 months, we've proven beyond reasonable doubt that we can do a lot of that quite well virtually. So, you know, I always kind of think of the image of I don't know what a couple of Google executives may be in Dublin getting on a plane and heading to New York for an important kind of a hour-long meeting and then they have dinner with the people that they're meeting but that lies in the New York restaurant, they overnight in New York and then they come back to Dublin the next day. I don't think that's ever going to happen again.(indistinct) I don't, I don't think, well I think there will be obviously certain circumstances but I would be, I would,(sighs) I just wonder how convincing those two corporate executives could be in front of a chief financial officer trying to prove that they couldn't do what that, what happened in the live environment online. So, absolutely I know that a huge percentage of corporate meetings need to take place in the live environment, there's no doubt about that, we all know that. But I think we have to be honest here too and agree that a lot of what we did are a lot of what we insisted needed to happen in a face-to-face environment, actually it doesn't. I think there's going to be, I think there will be a new pod process around that. I also think it's responsible travel. The biggest worry is certainly that, that I had and that many Indians that the traveling industry had, pre-pandemic was this growing sense of flight chaining, which could easily visit itself on an entire industry that did kind of travel and the dependent on travel specifically in relation to what it was delivered. But I think now we're in a situation where we will make distinctions kind of where corporations will make distinctions between what's essential travel and what's not essential travel. And those kinds of considerations will be filtered should the idea of responsible travel as well or traveling with a conscience. And we don't think it will impact the incentive travel because I think incentive travel will become an even more prized activity within an organization and even higher ranking reward and recognition element in a kind of a performance enhancing program in a company. So for the incentive travel people who might be listening I think, you know, there's very, very strong robust future around kind of a... I think we will be required to apply the same filters I think responsible travel, travel with a conscious will still play a huge role there. But I think we will be listened to in the context of the uniqueness of travel and the I suppose that word I used already the transformative and benefits that travel can bring both to the individual who's traveling, but also to the corporation that actually sponsors to travel. And that's where(indistinct) in the research might get very very strongly. And incentive travel initially was something that companies undertook because it made bottom line sense and they sold more stuff because people wanted to make it onto the trip. You know, obviously that was kind of proved that it was worth doing, but now the the benefits that companies are seeing in incentive travel are all of those financial benefits but there are all the soft benefits as well in other words, what happens when people go away together when they leave the office when they spend time and in a different setting in a different country with maybe, you know senior leadership in the organization and the relationships that emerge out of that, you know that's transformative for companies as well as for individuals, that actually enhances corporate culture and that's a huge focus, I think in the corporate world these days. So, I don't think that's going anywhere, but I do see, I do see the brakes being pushed and you know those travel management programs, you know with those large travel management consolidators around the world, who would have actually, you know facilitated the easy move around the planners of corporate executives who are having one-on-one meetings with each other. I think after 15 months, we know that we can do a lot of that in a virtual environment without losing kind of the, without losing its essence and you know, there will be other times there would be other moments in the course of the year, when the face-to-face meeting from a business perspective will also kind of be, be activated but not to the same extent as previously, I don't think. I do believe there will be more incentive travel, but actually interestingly we've been finding ourselves extending the kind of the term incentive travel over the last (indistinct) to include motivational meetings. On the basis that, incentive travel in its purest form is actually a highly niche product within the whole kind of travel world that involves the travel experience being in some way paid for by the incremental sales generated by the program that gives rise to it in the first place. So an incentive travel experience is not a company trip it's not a trip paid for by the company. It's a contest organized within an organization and that has a very, very strong, solid and robust financial consideration of its very base. Such that the incremental sales, generated by the contest not only pay for the travel experience but also kind of generate a bottom line return to the organization. So in, in many respects we tend to use the term incentive travel when we're referring to any type of company sponsored trip where people kind of go away together to a location. But it does have that very, very specific meaning or it does have that very specific definition. And when we use the term motivational events or motivational experiences or whatever we extend that edge a little bit, and we allow for the idea that a company might use a travel experience and for an end other than to generate kind of additional sales or bottom line return. It might actually do it specifically and for motivational purposes within the organization around kind of morale, around relationship building, around kind of cross-functional sorts of fusion and stuff like that. And that is that increasingly over the last number of years has become more and more central to the whole incentive travel thing in organizations. So it's called incentive travel but really it has a much broader kind of context in terms of the, I suppose promoting company culture and creating those kinds of feel good moments that give people a sense of empowerment, a sense of belonging, a sense of being part of something that is purposeful and meaningful which again are, I think, key elements that, you know you talked about Gen Zed look for in an organization. So in so far as companies are doing that are onto that. And so far as they've identified incentive travel in its broadest kind of term as being means to activate it well then absolutely it will continue there's no doubt about that.- Yeah agreed too, there's now two M's in MICE, motivational is the second M.- Absolutely, absolutely.- I mean that, I'm sitting on the fence here in terms of, you know, how things will open up again. I mean, if I think of, you know, an event that I've been to numerous times, you know, ITB or WTM, for example on the broader travel industry sphere. I will always bring with me the most junior person in the office. They will become part of the team so that they understand the broader industry that they're operating in. You know, is there a value in terms of paying for flights and accommodation, you know, on a purely financial basis? No, on a sustainable level, yes that's something now that, you know we'll give more consideration to, but, you know from a motivational perspective, you know helping that individual understand the industry that they're part of, to me that was always very, very important. Can we stick with incentive travel here? I'm aware that you've done some interesting qualitative research with 50 of the fortune 500 corporations in the US around incentive travel and you've spoken before about how the, the results are, you know very interesting with the outcomes. Can you talk us through what you can in terms of that research?- Yeah yeah, I mean, it's literally fresh from the field as they say. And it was, we identified it, it's a qualitative survey, so it's not about numbers, it's about college companies that are actually commissions to incentive travel as part of their reward in recognition program. And included in the list are very very large companies like Microsoft and like many of the large insurance companies in the United States. In finance and insurance and IT probably made up the the majority of the responses that we received. We did receive responses from the direct selling sector which again is a huge user of incentive travel by direct selling, I'm talking about the likes of, Avon, Mary Claire, Mary Clay sorry Mary Kay and other kind of direct marketing organizations for whom the travel experiences, the ultimate dream. So they're big users of incentive travel and their part of our survey as well. And what we're finding is that there's absolutely no diminishing around commitment to incentive travel. And so 70% of the companies that we actually spoke to have to postpone their live travel experience from 2020 that's not surprising at all. And partly 5% have to do it in 2021. And, you know, again, it's not surprising in fact, for 2021, it's probably surprising that it's not great effort. I suppose I should emphasize the survey was undertaken with US corporations and much of the travel that is happening in the US in 2021 is happening in the US it's not going international and although there are some interesting, cults around that as well, which I'll share shortly. But yeah, we have an almost unequivocal kind of commitment to continuing incentive travel. And this is reported in the survey as coming from the senior leadership of the organization. So, a lot of the incentive travel specialists within an organization might be working in the marketing department. They might be quite high up in the marketing department but ultimately they take their marching orders from, the CEO and other senior leadership. And they're not making the decisions themselves specifically about whether an incentive travel program takes place or not. And what they're telling us is that their officers for senior leadership remained 100% committed to incentive travel, and 94% of them said that. So, that's very encouraging in terms of a strong thumbs up for incentive travel despite the fact that for, it could be a hiatus of 24 months incentive travel won't have been delivered as part of the reward and recognition program within those organizations.- Is that because MICE or incentive travel within all the acronyms within MICE is the most measurable and therefore it's, it's easier to defend in terms of travel going forward and sustainability, do you think that's the reason?- Sure, I haven't heard of that before Mike but now that you've given me that idea I'm going to make that the central argument that I use in the future in discussing this particular research you're dead right, of course it is. I mean, incentive travel is extremely measurable particularly in terms of the hard dollar element to us which was the reason that it started in the first place. And I think increasingly the soft power outcomes are obvious and they're a little bit hard to put your hand on or to grasp in your hand but they're obvious in terms of the feeling and they're obvious in terms of the atmosphere they are obvious in terms of the morale that exists in organizations where incentive travel is actually is used so very definitely, yes. And you know, we saw this before, during the recession when many companies cut their incentive travel program because they believed they didn't have the money for us and of course, sales plummeted even further. And then some of them restorative during still during the recession and their profits went up. So in a way, there, there are good kind of a clear benchmarking examples in the recent past of the incentive travel being something that is measurable in a very positive way.- Okay, could we switch now to BMO's and destinations? Because for me that's how I first came to know you as a company, that, to me is the primacy of your work.(indistinct) for example, I know you work with many others are you seeing trends from a destination perspective? Because during the course of this series of talks and conversations, I spoken to a lot of you know, agencies, conference organizers, et cetera but I haven't had too much insight on the destination side in terms of trends are you seeing anything there?- Well, I think a lot of the destinations are waiting to see what's happening. Some destinations have been fast off the blocks and have started kind of different, you know, initiatives in terms of trying to kind of stoke the marketplace or keep interest in their destination out there. And I don't think there have been too many gaps or mistakes where, you know, at the beginning the fear was that, you know destinations would continue talking about themselves at a time when people just weren't in a position to listen and you know, I think there were one or two maybe inappropriate sort of campaigns that were quickly kind of withdrawn but by large I think destinations are trying to keep their ears to the ground and understand when will the time be right or when is the time, right, to start hitting the markets with promotional messages again and I think the time is now becoming right. I think we got very, very good news over the last kind of week or so particularly in relation to the European Union making quite a strong statement in relation to travel into Europe from the United States in particular which was obviously very, very positive, very positive for the, the big countries like Italy and Spain that depends so much on tourism. And, you know, not least our ourselves too, for Ireland. So, like I think the signs are that we, you know with vaccination programs and, you know with the falling numbers of cases in those countries that were the first to actually you know, experience the impact of the pandemic. I think we're in a much more positive place and I think that there is, you know, it is reasonable now for destinations to be putting themselves forward again as they would have, in a pre-pandemic environment. I think that what the research is telling us and again, this is from the corporate research from last week is that destination selection is of grace or kind of scrutiny than ever before. Strangely, in looking for destinations the criteria that corporates are highlighting and not surprisingly it's safety but strangely it's not safety relating to COVID that that was one of the options that corporates could choose in terms of, you know what are the top ranking criteria and that ranked in about fourth position. In first position was safety in general, so that kind of overall duty of care that a corporation must have in relation to its employees or its people, if they're being brought by that company to a destination, and that covers everything from obviously things like, you know, health security but obviously personal security as well. You know? So the broadest possible range of safety issues in a destination, the second then was destination appeal. So, you know, how appealing is the destination? And again, there's a very, very interesting piece of research that we did that SITE did last year in collaboration with FICP and IRF to other associations in the incentive travel industry. What emerged from that in terms of destination selection was. We are this was done at the height of the pandemic so we were asking respondents to look into the future and to the us what destinations they would be looking us at post pandemic scenario. And the destinations that came out top, are the rows and the rankings, where all destinations that had a strong perceived safety around COVID. So destinations like New Zealand, Australia came out very, very strong, they came out of nowhere like their long haul destinations for them in most places on the planet, because they are they're not kind of contiguous or adjacent to anywhere else really. But even North Americans, Europeans were calling out those destinations and it was all related to the, the perceived safety issue there were seen as kind of clean destinations. And, that survey was undertaken at the height of the pandemic. So I think in relation to destination appeal that appeal will definitely be filtered through the whole understanding of, you know what have we been hearing about that destination for the last 15 months? You know, is it a destination that has dealt well with the pandemic? Has it not dealt well with the pandemic? Are there lots of cases, are there still cases? And so that's kind of ghosting into the whole destination appeal and, you know, the destinations that would appeal to corporations will be the ones that have that safety filter, which was the number one but also kind of that they'll know that they're qualifiers the people who will be traveling with them to these locations will have a positive sense of that country,(indistinct) the way that country was reported upon in the news over the last 15 months.- I should mention for those watching this interview or this conversation has been recorded at the start of May, so today is the 5th of May so I suppose that timestamps everything we're listening from here. In that research, and I will ask you two questions here. Did any European countries come to the fore in terms of being perceived to safe?- No, we didn't actually name check countries in the research we grouped them as regions.- Okay.- And so when I say Australia and New Zealand, that cropped up in the survey as Oceania so I suppose we should include the Polynesian islands and Fiji and so on in that as well. But Oceania because of its definition and because it is really Australia, New Zealand, predominantly, it was easy to call out those two countries. Western Europe dropped a lust for North Americans, I can tell you that, it had been in the second position in the previous edition of this survey and it dropdown to ninth position. North America, which had been in the first position for UK buyers dropped out of the rankings completely and in fact, dropped out of the rankings for most of the different regions in the world. They should emphasize this survey was undertaken in September of 2020.- (indistinct)- You can see a difference Michael between, you know, what we call then and what we will take now in May. But certainly at that time, the US was not in favor at all.- Yeah, but I mean, we've moved since then but we won't have moved that much in terms of certain things that were true back in September, 2020 we'll still resonate now so they'll still be a value there. We might share with the viewers and listeners links, which I'll do in the show notes here, to that research. The fortune 500 research, will that be publicly available or a summary of it at all? That we can also--- Yeah it's on the site, it's on the site global website at the moment. So if you go inside global and into the top that says site foundation and scroll down you'll find corporate insights is there and it's a downloadable PDF. So very, definitely that is out there. We are now writing a white paper at the moment then that will come out within the next kind of three to four weeks.- Okay, well, I'll include the initial dropdown from site in the show notes here and then when the white paper comes out I'll update you as well. When we are discussing Europe there's two trends that I've seen one from speaking to different tourist boards around Europe is a, I suppose a realignment of the dependence on tourism by certain destinations. And that's definitely something I've heard a few times and I suppose, a will or desire to try and kind of, you know not rely so much on tourism. And then others have tried to kind of reinvent themselves and I think one trend we've seen a lot across the board in Europe is the kind of remote worker the nomad, for example, a lot of people are doing that. Where does that or those trends does that affect MICE at all in any way or is that very much just pure leisure and MICE will continue to do what it does?- I think the, I know Astonia had a wonderful campaign around, you know remote workers or so, nomad workers I think that they're, we're calling them although with the release and awarding of nomad land last week's outcasts I wonder if that's the image that we want to have in our minds.- Yeah, we just had completely different themes that people might get confused.(laughs)- Exactly a little bit if that was a little bleak, a brilliant movie but a little bleak, but an interesting thing, Michael in relation to the, kind of, to the nomad worker which does play very much into the eye in MICE and to the incentive travel. Is that it becomes a further reason to bring an organization together in a kind of a motivational meeting/incentive context. You know, in the past we went to the office we saw each other all the time. Now we don't. So, all the more reason to bring people together in temporary kind of settings. So, you know, you could do a five day kind of company retreat or a five day company event that would have many of the key elements of an incentive experience or a motivational meeting. Bringing your remote workforce together to a specific place and then undergoing a whole series of training exercises, recreational exercises, networking exercises but ultimately allowing people to connect with each other in the context of we're all part of this company. So I think, I think the nomads worker becomes yet another reason why incentive travel and motivational experiences will prevail. I think it will become the means whereby we bring those nomadic workers together and give them an identity as part of our company.- Yeah, agreed, I mean, we, we did this as an office back in January of this year, 2021. I gave everybody the opportunity to move to (indistinct) and we literally moved the whole team those that were available to travel. And it was a brilliant experience in terms of we were back in the office being able to communicate and it wasn't office it was a large house, but, you know, the benefits were huge I mean, our most recent team member, you know I literally only spent a week with her since she joined in February, 2020. So for us, I can see that as something that we will do long-term and we're having an internal debate in our office as to whether we go back to a normal office again. So I think, yeah, that's part of the equation. Can we move on to the sustainable element? Because for me that's intriguing in terms of, you know it's got a lot more, you know, say newsprint in terms of people are talking about sustainable travel. But I also feel that we'll go back to the way we were in terms of, you know, one of the things do open up people will say, well, yeah, sustainable is important but I need to do this. And this is how I always do this. And we will go back to, you know exactly how we did things before. Do you think sustainable is sustainable?- I do yeah and I hope that's more than an aspiration. And I think we have been down this road before Michael I mean, we, we will both remember the early kind of notice, sustainability became, you know the new kid on the block, it was what everybody was talking about. And, you know, in fairness, we all did what we needed to do at the time in terms of making our office behaviors a little bit more sustainable. And, you know, we started to, you know not having bottled water, but having kind of water in jugs at meetings and so on. So a lot of those initial kind of changes took place but they were superficial, I think we know that now. And in ways, you know, it was not great kind of phrase it was an example of green washing because it wasn't kind of integrated into the culture of organizations or into the fabric of how things are being done. I think we're in a totally different space now. And I think, I don't think there's anybody unless they're a climate change denier and there are, you know, lots of them out there too. But I don't think any kind of responsible organization can avoid taking sustainability to heart taking it very seriously and inculcating us as a DNA level in their organization. And that has to have an impact then on travel programs like I was saying it earlier on, you know it would be traveled with a conscious or it'll be traveled with responsibility because travel, you know we know it has to happen for all the reasons that we've already discussed. What doesn't have to happen from a travel perspective because it is ultimately causing kind of damage to the planet, won't happen, people will pull back from that. But I think, you know, the whole sustainability thing has, it's probably unleashed a wider sort of isn't a DEI diversity equity and inclusion it's kind of keyed into a new kind of corporate conscience and it's become the kind of the trigger for that corporate conscience that is now looking beyond just, you know, care for the planners, into all of the other ways in which corporations have not been as they should be. So diversity equity inclusion programs are now very very much the rigor in organizations the same as sustainability. So I don't think we can go back, I think one of the, the things that horrified us all during the pandemic was that the extent to which so much of the behavioral changes that we had made, like, for example, turning up in our local coffee shops with cups, with, you know, sustainable cups. Again we both know you can't use those anymore, you have to use the plastic cup. And then just as we walk around our towns, villages and cities, like the extent to which, you know, masks, paper masks fall out of people's back pockets and are, you know, strewn on the streets. So does this, all of the PPE and so on, which is, you know so I think that has kind of really disappointed us deeply to see that. You know, I'm certainly, I know, like within SITE we have a very very strong focus on sustainability and that in particular was, you know, it just seemed like rolling back. But I really do believe Michael that the sustainability ethos has kind of taken root and in a real and positive way at the heart of, you know the corporate world, but also the traveler world. And I tell you guys that, I think it's going to be different.- Yeah agreed, I mean, the face mask for the new plastic bags which is very worrying to see. But good to hear your thoughts on that. Lastly and quickly and I know we've taken a lot of your time but can I ask you, I'm starting to see events open up again. I saw test events last year and I went to a few of them, but now, you know realistically we are seeing real events happening again. And last week I spoke to Karen Yue from TTG Asia and multiple events are happening in Singapore. And there's interesting protocols and I'm seeing the same now also Futura is taking place in Madrid later this month. And I'm going to actually go meeting requests that are confirmed. But I just read yesterday, and Singapore would be doing this already but Fatura has actually reached out to the Madrid and Spanish government and they're working with them to permit this event happen. And I'm not seeing this in the majority of the world in terms of industry working with government and pushing government to ensure that travel and events and business travel can take place again. Do you think we're falling behind here in Europe when it comes to that? Do you think that we as an industry MICE and the broader travel industry should be pushing the way and encouraging government to get involved or will it come from the private sector?- Yeah, I think we've probably done in certain sectors on the, again if we just go back to the acronym. In certain elements of the acronym we've done quite well I think the exhibition people in particular UFI have done an amazing job, particularly in Germany because they negotiated a very, very clear ness distinction between mass gatherings and business meetings. And exhibitions were able to take place and they have been taking place in Germany on and off, obviously, you know, with, you know restrictions coming in and out, you know, through out the pandemic because of that distinction that was made. And I think that was certainly in Ireland too that was one of the big dialogue points that we were trying to kind of convey to government I'm not sure if we've been as successful as they have in Germany with doing that. And I think unfortunately a lot of business events have been kind of characterized by government as being kind of mass gatherings when they're not because we know that the average business event in terms of the, the data that we have of the people who are attending the connections that we have with them and the ability that we have to follow up and so on, it's totally different from the, you know the average mascot gathering that would take place. So I think it was probably in fits and starts we probably should have done a better global job at that but I think there have been certain kinds of successes in terms of explaining the specifics of the MICE requirements, the specifics of the MICE audience and how it did differ from those other kinds of mass gathering. So still work to do on that undoubtedly but, you know, SITE is back. We had our first live event in Colorado at the beginning of April. And again, you mentioned test events we use this very much as a pilot event. We have a documentary that we produced on us that shows all of the safety protocols that we put in place in order for that to take place in a safe environment. We tested people at the beginning when they came to the event we test them at the end when they were leaving. You know, so again, there'll be more and more of that I think IMEX Frankfurt as you know didn't take place this year. We kind of in Europe hoped that it would it would have been really the beginning of the opening of the industry but IMEX Las Vegas will undoubtedly take place. And, you know, so I think for, for the MICE world, and, you know there will be other regional events between now and then but I think for the MICE world, that will be the beginning, that will be the relaunch and we're really looking forward to that, obviously.- Excellent, good to hear. And very last quick, quick question. What is the next few weeks, months year hold for you and the rest of the team in SoolNua? Will you continue working from home? Will you, have you already adapted and changed how you work as a company?- Yeah, we have we've...(chuckles) We were, like the nature of the work that we do doesn't necessitate being in the same place at the same time.
We have a daily call at 12:30 and then sometimes it lasts five minutes sometimes it lasts an hour. When it's safe to do so, when we're allowed to do so, we have mass on a regular basis outdoors and more for social purposes than anything else. But I think that the nature of how we work allows us to work very efficiently, offline, and then you know, SITE is one of our bigger clients two of us are working kind of a lot on that particular account, SIZE is headquartered in Chicago the head of events lives in Vancouver and the head of sponsorship lives in New York. So we're already kind of a disparate organization anyway and it's good that we have, you know a side person on the global team that lives in Europe as well, because we bring them obviously the European perspective, you know to what could otherwise be very North American focused. So, yeah, so it suits us certainly. And from, you know, any of the, the corporate sector organizations that we've been speaking to I think in many cases they're looking forward to a blended future. I think that's the way it's going to be, you know there's huge advantages to working from home and then there are downsides too. So I think the hybrid environment is probably the one that allows the most kind of unleashing of both, of all the benefits and I continuing that way, but I mean, you know, Michael you invented the whole hybrid kind of idea you were doing it, I think before anybody else.- Yeah I remember, I mean 13 years I've been kind of working and living in different countries and it's a world of difference. I remember Skype was the technology I relied on, you know 13 years ago. And, you know, certainly the reaction people weren't necessarily accepting of the fact that I wasn't in country. And to a certain extent I didn't always share it with people whereas now, you know, it's to be expected people really don't to ask where you are. It's, literally, it's turned on its head. Well Pdraic, thank you for your time we've been talking today to Pdraic Gilligan who is managing partner at SoolNua based here in Dublin. I'll include all of Pdraic's contact details in the show notes and all the research that we discussed we'll also include that as well. So thank you Pdraic for your time again and thank you everybody for listening and watching.(upbeat music)