Padraic Gilligan

President
Society of Incentive & Travel Executives

Pádraic Gilligan holds a masters degree in Italian from University College Dublin and a post graduate qualification in Marketing from Boston College. Following a 13 year career in education, teaching at second and third levels, he started Delaney Marketing Consultants in 1994 with Patrick Delaney. In 2002 Delaney Marketing acquired Ovation and re-branded as Ovation Group. In June 2007 Ovation commenced a robust global expansion programme which has seen the establishment of Ovation offices in 11 European and Middle Eastern destinations under the Ovation Global DMC brand.

Gilligan has written and spoken extensively on many aspects of meetings and incentives, regularly contributing to SITE , MPI and other industry bodies. For the past three years he has been focusing on Regulations in the Pharma Industry and ROI and has held seminars on these topic in Ireland, the UK, Belgium, the US, China and South Africa.

In 2004 he was elected to the International Board of the Society of Incentive and Travel Executives (SITE) and in 2008 will serve as President of this global organisation.

Gilligan is married to Rita Smyth and together they have 6 children. He is a passionate supporter of Arsenal Football Club, plays guitar and walks 3 miles every day. His ambition in life is to live long enough to be a burden on his children – a perfect model for ROI!

Rob Davidson

Senior Lecturer in Business Travel and Tourism
University of Westminster

Rob Davidson is a Senior Lecturer in Business Travel and Tourism at the University of Westminster in London. He joined the University in 1998, after spending nine years in France teaching at two universities (Lille and Montpellier) and at the ESSEC-Cornell Institute of Management in Paris. Prior to that, he spent five years as Education and Training Manager with VisitBritain in London. His main areas of expertise are conference and business travel, and over the last ten years he has written widely on these themes. His latest book was published in 2006: Marketing Destinations and Venues for Conferences, Conventions and Business Events, co-written with Tony Rogers of the British Association of Conference Destinations. In addition, he regularly writes articles for the professional business tourism press, including Conference News. Rob also runs his own consultancy business, and has carried out research for a number of conference organisations in the UK and overseas.

He is regularly invited to speak at international conferences on the theme of trends in business tourism. Since 2002, Rob has been employed as business tourism Industry Analyst by Reed Travel Exhibitions, for whom he carries out ongoing research. At EIBTM in Barcelona each year, he launches his annual report on current and future developments in the conference and incentive industry worldwide In February 2005, he was nominated Meetings and Incentive Personality of the Year 2005, at the Meetings & Incentive Travel Awards ceremony in London, in the presence of Her Royal Highness Princess Anne. In 2006, 2007 and 2008, he was included in Conference & Incentive Travel magazine’s ‘Power 50’ – the 50 most influential people in the UK conference industry.

Christian Mutschlechner

Director
Vienna Convention Bureau

Since 1991, Christian Mutschlechner has been the director of the Vienna Convention Bureau, where he has worked in other capacities since 1985. Previously, Christian held positions at Conference Management and Interconvention, PCO. He maintains a presence in national and international industry associations, including the Austrian Convention Bureau, the European Federation of Conference Towns and the International Congress and Convention Association.

Zuzana Adamson

Director
MICE CEE

Zuzana Adamson is the owner and publisher of the international magazines MICE CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE – the only B2B magazines focused on promoting the CEE countries to the MICE travel industry worldwide. Together with the website, www.mice-cee.com, the magazines serve as a platform of information and exchange between players from the meetings industry in the CEE and the world. Each publication, including Go Czech Republic, Wow! Hungary, or Try Slovakia, is published with a distribution of 4,000 copies and its readership includes international corporate buyers, managers from incentive agencies and DMC’s, and directors of professional associations.

Prior to this enterprise, Adamson worked in the university and academic milieus. She received her PhD degree in Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne and focused on structuralism and the novels of the writer Milan Kundera. Her Czech translation of the poetry of A. de Lamartine was highly esteemed.

A journalist contributing to various international publications and a passionate traveller, Adamson published a series of travelogues for such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Travel Focus, and Food Service. She then assumed the post of Director for Business Development for Isram Israel in Central Europe, facilitating business for this company in the CEE. She also created the new magazine Hotel and Spa Management for the Czech publishing company Economia.

Her hobbies include travelling, learning about new cultures and facilitating interesting business and enterprise systems. Zuzana’s husband, Steven Adamson, is a writer from Los Angeles, currently based in Paris.