MARKETING MAGIC

 LORNA HEALION, 22, found a creative outlet in the event and hospitality marketing sector. The Sales & Marketing Assistant at Dublin’s five star Merrion Hotel tells us what she enjoys most about her role.

Fact File

Name: Lorna Healion

Job: Sales & Marketing Assistant

Works: Merrion Hotel

Courses: Event Management GMIT

We ran an event in Transition Year and I held the PRO (Public Relations Officer) role. From that moment I knew this is what I wanted to do when I left school. I looked up Event Management and Public Relations and found courses in Dublin, Limerick and Galway. A lot of my friends were in college in Galway and I knew it was a great place so I put GMIT down as my first choice. I spent three amazing years there and I loved every minute.

The Event Management course is great but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. There were 60 on our course to start and that fell to 40 by the time we finished. I think those 20 people who dropped out chose Event Management because it sounded like fun but then realised that while it is fun, a lot of hard work goes into staging an event. You need to be the kind of person who thrives on pressure to succeed in the events sector.

The marketing side of the course really appealed to me. We were tasked with running an event each year and I enjoyed writing the press releases and finding creative ways to represent the event. I was good at English in school and I still love writing – it’s a good creative outlet for me.

AMAZING EXPERIENCE

You spend eight months working in the industry as part of the course and for my placement I headed to Cork to work in the marketing department of Fota Island Resort. I learned so much during my time there. I worked on the resort’s social media and advertising campaigns and I was also able to work with national agencies on marketing strategies for an event which brought over 60,000 people to the resort each year. It was an amazing experience and I credit my passion for the tourism industry to my time in Fota.

When I graduated from GMIT with a 1:1 I decided to head back to Cork for a fourth and final year of study, specialising in marketing at CIT. It gave me vast insight into marketing and sales and I was delighted to land a role in Dublin’s prestigious Merrion Hotel within a month of graduating.

DIVERSE ROLE

There are five ladies working in the sales and marketing department of The Merrion, three on sales and two on marketing. As a Sales & Marketing Assistant I work with all of them and it is wonderful to be able to dip into all facets of the department as it gives me a very broad and interesting role. On any given day I could work on the hotel’s website, blog, in-house marketing collateral or our e-newsletter. I love working on the marketing collateral the most – you need to be creative, have a good eye for detail, and a sharp focus when proofreading.

I am loving my time at The Merrion and I’d like to stay here for at least another year to learn as much as I can and get a good grounding in hotel marketing. I can’t think of anything I don’t like about working in hotels. Some people are put off by the unsocial hours but other than the odd evening function my workday is the standard nine to five, Monday to Friday. You don’t always have to work weekends in this industry.

When I finish at The Merrion I plan to travel for a while and I’m thinking of heading to Vancouver which would be amazing. I don’t know if I will stay working in hotels while I’m away but the beauty of marketing is that the principles are the same, no matter what sector you’re in, or what country you travel to. You will always be able to get work.

This article first appeared in the 2020 issue of Get a Life in Tourism.