The company has a permanent professional staff who are specialists in a number of relevant fields, including Marketing, Market Research, Product Development, Strategic Planning, Finance, Transport, and Management Organisation. Additionally, the company draws on an expert panel of consultants with wide and varied experience.
Directors
Michael Mac Nulty
Executive Chairman
Michael Mac Nulty is internationally recognised as an authority on tourism marketing, product development, cultural heritage and organisational structures. The experience he amassed in the eighties as the leader of Ireland's National Tourism Organisation and as Vice-Chairman of the European Travel Commission has laid the foundation for the success of Tourism Development International in the nineties. His skill in persuading the Irish Government to identify tourism as a priority growth sector has been greatly admired and put to good use in his consultancy career. His consultancy vision is the preparation of strategies which are practical and implementable. He has a formidable track record as a team leader on international projects funded by the E.U./U.N.D.P/World Tourism Organisation and in communicating with decision makers at the highest level.
Ron W. Allen
Director
Ron Allen is the recently retired Chairman and C.E.O. of Delta Airlines Inc, Atlanta, U.S.A. A former Chairman of I.A.T.A. he is recognised as a leading authority on world aviation. He is also a Board member of Coca Cola Corporation, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C., and Chairman of the Board of Governors of Presbyterian University, Clinton, South Carolina.
Peter Mac Nulty
Managing Director
Peter Mac Nulty was appointed Managing Director of Tourism Development International in January 2001 and has a background in economics and market research. He has been responsible for the innovative design and direction of over 100 major research programs, feasibility studies, marketing strategies and strategic tourism studies internationally and in Ireland. He has worked on tourism and leisure projects in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.
In addition to his research and strategic planning background, he has worked closely with clients in each of the main sectors of Irish tourism, assisting enterprises in business planning, new product development, visitor management, customer care and marketing.
Currently, he is the Project Director for the Product Development Phase of the South Carolina Tourism Action Plan. He is a director of the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown (Dublin) County Enterprise Board and is former administrator of the Irish American Cultural Institute.
David Mac Nulty
Director
David Mac Nulty is a Director of Tourism Development International since 1990 having previously spent 12 years in the hotel industry at management level in Ireland, USA and Switzerland. He has extensive experience of conducting consultancy assignments in Ireland, the UK and Europe, relating to accommodation and leisure. David has been marketing advisor to many of our major private sector clients working closely with the Irish Tourist Board on overseas promotions.
Robert Cleverdon
Director - International Projects
Robert Cleverdon was appointed Director - International Projects in September 2008. He has worked for four decades as a educator in the fields of travel, tourism and leisure consultant. His experience covers not only theoretical and practical aspects of development and marketing planning, but has also been obtained through working in many different types of country – 95 in total – and for both destinations (at multi-country regional, national, province/state/county and local levels) and private sector operators (i.e. airlines, tour operators, hotels).
He has published extensively on tourism market trends and forecasting both through the UNWTO – he is the author of the Tourism 2020 Vision series of reports published in 1999/2000 – and other organisations such as the Economist Intelligence Unit and Mintel.
Michael Murphy
Director
Michael Murphy, BA (Mod) is Managing Director at NCB Ventures FCA. He is a graduate in Economics from Trinity College Dublin, and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. He has 14 years experience in the private equity industry as a senior investment executive with Nadcorp from 1987-1991 and as Chief Executive of NCB Ventures since 1997. He was elected Chairman of the Irish Venture Capital Association in 2003/04 and has been a director of the Association since 1998. He was also a director of the European Venture Capital Association in 2003/04.
N. P. Delaney FCA
Director
Niall Delaney is former Chairman and C.E.O. of the Mace Group. He has extensive financial control experience in Asia, Africa, Europe and was a former financial executive with Unilever. He is a mountaineer and has climbed Mt Kilimanjairo in Africa and has strong interest in eco-tourism.
Senior Staff and Associates
Mandy Ferber
Office Administration
Mandy joined Tourism Development International in December 2007. Since that time she has been intimately involved in all aspects of administration of the company’s consultancy and market research projects. A key aspect of her brief is to ensure that the firm’s industry database is kept up to date (i.e. contact details, names, email addresses, etc) and to ensure that technical queries from the industry are dealt with in an efficient manner.
Sara McGeary
Research Associate
Sara McGeary has 15 years experience in the tourism and leisure industry. Before becoming an independent consultant, she was Tourism Officer with Ards Borough Council (Northern Ireland) and prior to that was Associate Director with Tourism Development International. She was also Development Officer with South East England Tourist Board and Projects Officer with Kent County Council.
She has extensive project experience having worked on numerous tourism assignments across the UK and Ireland. This experience includes co-ordinating research assignments on behalf of Tourism Ireland, Northern Ireland Tourist Board and Fáilte Ireland. She has also conducted tourism funding project evaluations, acted as facilitator for area tourism projects, co-ordinated cross-border and transnational European funding applications and tourism strategies. Her experience includes acting as a research associate on over 25 hotel/ visitor accommodation futures studies across the North West, East of England and Southern England over the last eight years.
Patricia Roudaut
Research Analyst
Patricia Roudaut is responsible for survey analysis in Tourism Development International. Since 1995, she has been responsible for survey analysis on all major research assignments carried out by the firm including the 2006 NITB Business Visitor Attitude Survey, the biennial Visitor Attractions Survey, the 2002, 2003, 2004 Tourism Barometer, the Bord Fáilte Product Users Survey, and assignments carried out on behalf of NITB and the National Cultural Institutions.
Robert Travers
Associate
Robert Travers has over 16 years’ senior consultancy experience in more than 20 countries. He is an experienced marketing expert and has undertaken numerous tourism and poverty-related assignments for many organisations including UNDP. He was employed by UNOPS as Tourism Marketing Expert for the UNDP Tourism for Rural Poverty Alleviation Programme in Nepal. He was Team Leader for the UNDP Regional Initiative on Indigenous People’s Rights and Development project in Lao PDR. He was Tourism Organisational Expert for the UNDP Rural Tourism Master Plan for Malaysia with Tourism Development International. With Tourism Development International he was key expert for the EU TACIS Armenia Tourism Training Pilot, and secondly delivered training programmes under the UNDP Malaysia Rural Tourism Master Plan.
He has extensive experience of Islamic cultural heritage and tourism through his work in Egypt, Jordan, Malaysia, Tanzania (Zanzibar) and Tunisia. In terms of Public-Private Partnership he developed the Tourism PPP Strategy for Executive Privatisation Commission (Jordan) under the EU MEDA programme. This substantial assignment included developing feasibility studies for pilot PPP tourism projects including cultural heritage sites.