What happened when 13 event planners gave up flying to travel slowly across Ireland?
A group of UK event planners swapped flights for trains and ferries on a journey across Ireland. What they discovered challenges some of the industry’s biggest assumptions about networking, wellbeing - and the value of slowing down.
“So this is luxury travel - for people not in a hurry.”
Someone said it quietly on the train somewhere between London and North Wales. By that point, laptops had already started to close, conversations had opened, and the urgency that usually defines business travel had begun to dissolve into the changing landscape outside the window.
Last month, 13 UK event planners travelled from London to Dublin and on to Kerry not by plane, but by rail and ferry, as part of Ireland Overland, a new fam trip designed to test a bigger question facing the meetings industry: what if sustainable event design actually created a better delegate experience?
Developed by Dublin Convention Bureau, Kerry Convention Bureau, Meet in Ireland and Evolve Events, the programme was less destination showcase and more live experiment. Delegates would travel slowly to Ireland, return by air, and compare the experiences not just in terms of emissions, but in how they felt.
The results challenged some deeply embedded assumptions about business travel.
The journey became the event
The meetings and events industry has spent years discussing sustainability largely through the lens of carbon reduction, offsetting schemes and reporting frameworks.
Ireland Overland approached the issue differently. Instead of treating travel as a logistical inconvenience before the “real” event began, the journey itself became part of the experience design.
Travelling by train through Wales to Holyhead created something event planners rarely build into programmes anymore: unstructured time.
Delegates shared tables, swapped stories, reflected, laughed and gradually became a group before they had even reached Ireland. A curated playlist, guided meditation and light-touch content on the GoodiePack platform subtly encouraged people to slow down rather than fill every moment with productivity.
“Being able to sit with the group you are travelling with is great, making connections from the beginning,” said one attendee.
At Holyhead, a surprise Welsh male voice choir arranged by Meet In Wales welcomed the group at the port. It was an emotional moment, deeply connected to place - and nigh-on impossible to replicate in an airport.
“It just felt so special and gave such a true flavour of Wales and Irish hospitality,” said another delegate.
By the time the group boarded the ferry to Dublin, something unusual had happened. Strangers were already behaving like colleagues returning from a conference together.
Why slowing down changes group dynamics
The irony at the centre of Ireland Overland is that slower travel may actually accelerate connection.
Business events spend huge sums trying to engineer networking through hosted buyer schedules and so forth, yet much of the genuine bonding on this trip happened organically - because people were simply given the space to exist together without constant stimulation.
On the ferry crossing, delegates gathered on deck in the sea air, shared lunch around open tables and attended a session exploring how arrival shapes delegate experience. The crossing itself became transitional space, psychologically as much as geographically.
“Spending that kind of time together, moving, experiencing and reflecting at a slower pace, creates a different type of connection,” one planner reflected. “It felt less transactional and more genuine.”
Airports optimise movement, but they also isolate. Everyone disappears into headphones, security queues and departure gates. Rail and ferry travel, by contrast, created opportunities for collective experience.
“It’s not often you are giggling with strangers after meeting only a few hours earlier,” said one attendee. “I have attended two-day conferences where I have barely spoken to anyone, but after an hour on the train we had already swapped war stories and bonded over the experience.”
The contrast became even sharper on the return flight home.
The plane was faster, certainly. More efficient. But the atmosphere shifted instantly back towards individualism: books opened, headphones returned, conversations faded. Delegates arrived home quicker, but something intangible had been lost along the way.
Sustainability beyond carbon
Crucially, Ireland Overland avoided becoming an exercise in sustainability theatre. Instead, it was embedded naturally into experiences that already felt meaningful.
In Dublin, delegates explored the city on foot rather than via transfers. A walking tour led by social enterprise In Our Shoes connected attendees directly to the Liberties district and its communities. At Jando, a B-Corp print studio, delegates screen-printed picturea of the Ha'penny Bridge, symbolising choosing the scenic route over the fastest one. At the Museum of Literature Ireland, an Earth Day exhibition used poetry and storytelling to reconnect visitors with the natural world without relying on statistics or corporate messaging.
In Kerry, sustainability became even more immersive. Delegates experienced local food systems, visited Muckross Traditional Farms, travelled by open boat to Innisfallen Island and took part in a wellbeing session among monastic ruins overlooking the Lakes of Killarney. The latter was hosted Be In Your Element, who provided support throughout the trip
Muckross Farms
Muckross Farms
There was also cycling, beekeeping, painting classes and storytelling from a traditional seanchaí.
That may be Ireland’s greatest advantage in the sustainability conversation. The country does not need to artificially manufacture “authentic” experiences because culture, landscape and community are already tightly interwoven into the visitor experience.
As one delegate put it: “Ireland is inherently sustainable. They don’t even think about sustainable events. Their events just are sustainable.”
Can this scale for the events industry?
The obvious challenge, of course, is scalability.
Few corporate events can realistically move hundreds or thousands of delegates entirely by rail and ferry, particularly internationally. Time pressures, budgets and logistics remain powerful forces.
But the lesson is not necessarily that every delegate must abandon flying. It is that travel itself deserves more intentional design.
What if event planners thought about arrival as part of the delegate journey rather than merely pre-event admin? What if slower moments, reflection and shared travel experiences improved networking outcomes more effectively than hyper-scheduled agendas? What if wellbeing and sustainability were not separate conversations but connected ones?
The data supports at least part of the argument. The rail and ferry route generated a fraction of the emissions of the equivalent flight journey, while the event itself received a Platinum sustainability rating from From Now, placing it in the top 1 per cent of events measured by the organisation.
But the emotional response from delegates may ultimately matter more than the carbon numbers.
Because Ireland Overland changed how people thought - not just about Ireland as a destination, but about the very nature of business events themselves.
For years, the industry has optimised for speed, scale and efficiency. This trip suggested there may be another model emerging - one where connection, immersion and intentional slowness become competitive advantages rather than inefficiencies to eliminate.
