Gilligan comments on volcanic ash crisis
10 May 2010
As volcanic ash shut down Irish airports for the second time in two weeks, Padraic Gilligan, Managing Director of Ovation Global DMC spoke with meetpie.com about how Ovation Global DMC and Ovation Ireland had been affected by the flight interruptions and what measures were being put in place to minimise the effects.
Ovation Ireland was expecting a group from Norway to arrive in Ireland for a motivational programme in the first week of May and Ovation simply had to wait and react on an 'hour by hour' basis as airports in the north of Ireland closed and the status of Dublin airport was uncertain.
Gilligan said Ovation was taking all the precautions it could to keep events on track. He added: “We have large groups coming in next week but we’re just going ahead as normal. Although it’s making our work all the harder, we also see it as an opportunity to do what we do. This is how we demonstrate our value proposition.”
When volcanic ash closed airspace for six days last month Ovation Ireland had 450 delegates from an Australian bank on an Irish incentive which they had to repatriate. Meanwhile, 40 incentive delegates due in to Ireland from the US rerouted to Hawaii and a group from the UK also cancelled. Both events have since been rebooked, but the ash fallout continues to cause headaches for the DMC.
Padraic concluded “There’s a lot of ambiguity out there, and we don’t want to damage any client relationships. But this will pass and we’ll quickly forget about it, just like SARS, bird flu and swine flu. Next week it will be a plague of locusts!”
To read the full article in Meetpie.com please click here