Promoting Ireland as a top choice for eco friendly travel.
See the Conference CO2 Calculator at:
www.meetinireland.com/Country-Sites/Great-Britain/carboncalculator.aspx
Project overview
Tourism Ireland is responsible for promoting the Island of Ireland, and Northern Ireland, overseas. Our work with the B2B division in Great Britain includes setting the strategy for online marketing and creating campaigns to attract audiences through online channels.
With Tourism Ireland wanting to increase digital marketing activity, we suggested the development of a mobile solution to support the launch of the new carbon-neutral Convention Centre Dublin.
We knew that the proximity of Ireland to the UK is a key benefit to the Tourism Ireland business audience. Ireland produces one of the lowest Carbon Footprints for business travel, compared to most European destinations – and Corporate Social Responsibility is now a key concern for industry.
We suggested developing a carbon calculator iPhone App aimed at conference and meetings professionals that would enable them to compare the carbon cost of travelling to different conference locations around the world.
The challenges
With a large number of green carbon calculators available, we knew that we had to make our app stand out from the crowd.
It had to bring immediate benefit to our audience, who plan conferences and events for large numbers of business travelers.
They might be considering a number of different locations for their conference, with attendants travelling from departure locations all over the world. They would need to be able to enter all this information into the app to be able to compare the carbon costs of each destination.
What we did
The completed Conference CO2 Calculator lets users specify unlimited delegate departure locations, compare the CO2 emissions associated with air travel to three international destinations at a time, and evaluate their chosen event or meeting destination with travel to Dublin. To power these results we chose AMEE as our data provider. As an added benefit, and to enble cross selling, users are also able to access a range of special offers on venues and hotels in Dublin.
The Conference CO2 Calculator app enables the user to:
- Add as many delegate departure locations as necessary
- Compare up to three destinations per calculation
- Compare CO2 emissions between international destinations
- Compare CO2 emissions between destinations in Ireland
- View special offers direct from venues and hotels
- Get useful tips on how to hold a ‘green meeting’
- Find out more information on the top ‘Green’ venues
The results
The Conference CO2 Calculator was launched on 1st September 2010 and is available to download from the iPhone Apps store. The app has received a great deal of interest from the B2B tourism industry, and has been heavily featured in the trade press. Interestingly, for an app that’s aimed primarily at the UK market we’ve seen a significant number of downloads coming from outside the UK.
We’re currently developing the app for the BlackBerry mobile platform. This new version will include further functionality that helps conference and meetings professionals to provide insight to their clients on corporate social responsibility issues associated with events planning.
"One of the main reasons delegates choose to come to Ireland is its green credentials. This app helps organisers assess their conference or event on its CO2 emissions."
David Boyce, Deputy Director Great Britain, Tourism Ireland