Why give your new meetings industry consultancy a name that, at first glance, is indeciperhable?
Perhaps because it signals that the company is different—indeed, that it offers a new vantage point from which to understand the meetings industry. SoolElla, the name of the soon-to-be-launched boutique consultancy of Patrick Delaney and Pádraic Gilligan, is an anglicized version of the gaelic term siúl eile, which in fact means “another viewpoint” or “an alternative perspective.”
Having worked with meetings and events for 20 years, Delaney and Gilligan intend to use their varied and worldwide experience to help tourist boards, convention bureaus, hotels, and destination management companies with marketing, training, and convening/moderating customer advisory boards. From cross-cultural “boot camps,” to social media campaign planning, to advice on the must-attend industry events and trade shows, to learning how to cull genuine insights when gathering your best customers together, SoolElla’s focus will be on helping destinations tell their stories to meeting and incentive planners.
“Take my 15 years in education and Patrick’s background in hospitality, add in 20 years of MICE, sprinkle on a liberal dose of quirky, left-of-field personality and a generous pinch of attitude (in a good way!) and you have a cocktail designed to provide you with another viewpoint on meetings and events,” Gilligan says with a wink.
Most recently, Delaney and Gilligan were executives at Geneva, Switzerland–based MCI, which had acquired their Dublin-based global destination management agency, Ovation Group, in 2007. They left their positions at the end of 2013, but Sool Ella now counts MCI as a client.
“We’ll miss Patrick and Pádraic on a day-to-day basis at MCI but I’m proud that MCI has become their first client,” said Roger Tondeur, chairman. “They bring peerless experience, deep expertise, and real value to the table and I look forward to working with them on a project basis in 2014.”
In addition, Gilligan will continue to represent Ovation, MCI’s destination management division, to the financial and insurance meeting community.
Find more at the company’s Web site, www.soolella.com
