www.meetingsbooker.com

I work closely with the Irish Hotel Federation with regard to their e-marketing and in particular hotel affiliate marketing. I also serve on the Irish Hotel Federation marketing committee which meets every quarter to discuss the overal marketing strategy for the organisation. This committee works as a sounding board to share ideas and provide an innsight into possible marketing opportunities. The Marketing committee consists of a select number of Hotel Marketing Managers, Failte Ireland Marketing Director, Tourism Ireland Head of Marketing and selected specialists consultancies including Proactiv Marketing and Geneysis. 

I am a member of the Hospitality Sales and Marketing International Irish chapter board. HSMAI are an active association charged with providing sales and marketing staff in the hospitality sector with an innsight into new innovative trends, training and rewarding excellence. Our annual HSMAI Dinner and Awards is Irelands leading hospitality awards event attracting close to 400 guests from all sectors of the hospitality industry including, hotels, conference venues, golf resorts, restaurants to name but a few. 

I was previously Director of Marketing for Ireland’s largest Hotel and Conference Resort. Citywest Hotel, Conference and Golf Resort incudes,1,314 rooms, 4,000 capacity conference centre, 18 additional meeting rooms, two golf courses, leisure centre, 3 restaurants and four bars. I was responsable for developing the hotel marketing strategy, redeveloping the hotels website and online presence and well as managing all areas of the hotels marketing mix including, hotel advertising, PR, hotel promotions etc. It was during my time at Citywest that I felt hotels and conference venues needed more effective online marketing systems hence the creation of Meetingsbooker.com.

During my time at Citywest I doubled online revenue through the hotels own website through aggressive search engine optimisation, advertising as well as pay per click campaigns on Google.

I was promoted after three months at Citywest to take over the marketing of their championship PGA National Ireland golf course at Palmerstown House. As a keen golfer, this was an amazing experience, marketing one of Ireland top golf courses. Membership was not open at the time therefore the majority of our efforts involved targetting golf societies, corporate golf days and domestic and overseas visitors. Again the web was an important element of this role and included redesigning the golf course website. 

I was also given responsability for marketing Irelands only dedicated airport. Weston Executive Airport is also part of the Mansfield Group, the airport caters for executive jets and helicopters. 

Tourism Ireland / Bord Failte

When I returned from Milan I took up a role as Internet Development Manager with Tourism Ireland. My job was two fold, first to maintain and develop their current range of 23 international websites in 14 different languages. This included managing the role out of new websites and microsites while managing the website agency and liaising with the various market offers to deliver their e-marketing requirements. I was also responsable for developing the new e-marketing strategy for Tourism Ireland which lead to the development of their new Discoverireland.com €2.6 million websites. This strategy involved a series of workshops with Irish tourism industry partners, internal stakeholder input as well as input from general best practice and specialist consultancies.   

Marketing Manager, Italy, Greece, Cyprus & Malta.

I spent fours years in Milan, as Tourism Ireland market manager for Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta. During this time I was responsable for marketing Ireland as a tourism destination in these markets, this included managing 4 staff in the Milan office, advertising and PR agency. I managed an annual marketing budget of over €1 million euro. The marketing mix included national advertising print, radio, cinema and web campaigns, aggressive PR and publicity campaign, trade and consumer promotions as well as e-marketing and CRM.