THERE WAS clever ambush marketing by Denis O’Brien last weekend following boxer Katie Taylor’s return to Dublin Airport after winning gold at the World Championships, where she also secured her ticket for the London Olympics.
O’Brien’s Caribbean mobile phone group Digicel, one of Taylor’s sponsors, booked a room at the airport to host a press conference for Taylor.
Digicel has no interests here and its logo was absent from the conference. However, banners for O’Brien’s national radio station Newstalk were plastered everywhere, much to the annoyance, it seems, of RTÉ.
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SPOTTED AT the Uefa Champions League Final in Munich last Saturday night was football-mad property developer and politician Mick Wallace. For once, the Wexford TD wasn’t sporting a pink top. “It’s in the wash,” he joked.
Wallace darted for the exit as soon as Didier Drogba had sealed Chelsea’s dramatic win over local team Bayern Munich.
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RYANAIR’S MICHAEL O’Leary isn’t the only European airline boss upset about Government-imposed air travel taxes.
In the May edition of Magazin, Lufthansa’s inflight glossy, chief executive and chairman Christoph Franz said these taxes mean an overhead of about €1 billion a year, of which the airline can recoup just €361 million. “Lufthansa, together with other members of the German air traffic industry, is renewing its appeal to the German government to reconsider the air traffic tax,” he added.
It is rather more conciliatory language than O’Leary might use – but you get the idea.
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