In particular, the Irish Tourism Industry Awards aim to:

• Publicly recognise and reward excellence
• Provide a benchmark for best practice
• Encourage the continuous raising of standards
• Provide better visitor experiences
• Emphasise the value of the tourism sector
• Promote a biennial platform of celebration
• Provide networking opportunities for operators and supporters

The Awards are organised by the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC) and have been held at the Clayton Hotel, Burlington Road on a biennial basis since 2015, with further events held in 2017 and 2019. For each of these Awards Ceremonies, Advantage has won a competitive tender to be appointed the Event Management Company for the event.

The Awards were the brainchild of Brian McColgan, Chairman of the Abbey Group and the then ITIC CEO, Eamonn McKeon who both had the vision that despite being our largest indigenous industry, tourism deserved a high-level forum to reward excellence and innovation.

Advantage were represented by:

Ronan Flood, Managing Director with responsibility for:

• Project lead to include Client liaison and account management
• Event Production
• Event Content
• MC and AV crew briefing
• Live show calling

Sarah Durcan, Operations Director, with responsibility for:

• Event logistics
• Venue
• Budget
• Sponsor management
• Table plan
• Running order
• Collateral
• Theme and décor
• Pre and post Awards Entertainment

Event Delivery and Execution

Entrants were recruited via an extensive eMarketing and Social Media campaign ran by ITIC with the extensive support of the organisations represented on the Steering Committee. Advantage devised the communications plan for the first edition of the ITIAs and it was so successful that it has been rolled out again for the 2017 and 2019 event. Extensive use of winner’s videos from the previous event as suggested by Advantage led to strong industry engagement, particularly on social media. Sponsors were recruited by ITIC with Advantage providing input into the benefits package and managing the sponsors to ensure they received the agreed return on investment.

The original closing date was extended on our advice as insufficient entries had been received. By doping so ITIC received over 300 entries for the 2019 event and this became the target audience to book tables and places at the Awards Dinner.  The Steering Group then reviewed the entries and reduced the number to 5 finalists for each of the 15 categories.

The 75 finalists were contacted by Advantage in late Nov 2018 to submit hi res imagery and logos for use in the Event Content. All finalists received a “ITIA Finalists Laurel” to use in their email signatures in order to promote the event and to reward the finalists. The Judging Panel met in early Jan 2019 to select the winner in each category and were videoed with one judge providing a context statement for each category as to why they won. Advantage had just 2 weeks to finalise all event content and to an exceptionally high level.