McKennas announce new partnership with DCU

Lecturers and students from DCU School of Communications have forged a partnership with John and Sally McKenna to produce a series of smart guides to hotel and dining experiences in Ireland.

Under an Enterprise Ireland knowledge partnership, the School of Communications and the McKennas will develop a new guide to the Wild Atlantic Way that will leverage new technologies in the field, applying current student and staff research on interactive applications to a tourism business context.

This agreement builds on collaboration between DCU Associate Lecturer, Dónal Mulligan and the McKennas which resulted in the smartguide The Best Restaurants in Ireland 2014, their first digital offering following many years of award-winning print publications. The new guides work in conjunction with www.guides.ie.

Speaking about the partnership, Dónal said,
“This agreement with McKennas underscores DCU’s reputation as an engaged university, translating knowledge and skills into tangible industry benefit. These guides will be developed by staff and students of the BSc in Multimedia and MA in Multimedia whose work and research are characterised by innovative technology and high quality. This project will provide invaluable experience for our students in applying their interactive multimedia research to industry and the workplace.”

Formerly known as the Bridgestone Guides, the McKennas’ Guides have been published in book form for the last 25 years.  No other culinary guides have ever won a reputation for being so readable and so descriptive, which is why John and Sally McKenna have won the André, the Glenfiddich and the Slow Food prizes for their guides.

Sally McKenna said,

“We are very excited about continuing our work with DCU’s School of Communications to develop Where to Eat and Stay on the Wild Atlantic Way. It’s not quite an app, not quite a book, so we believe the best name of our new digital publications is simply ‘Smart Guides’ as they combine our reputation for vividly descriptive prose, our experience and knowledge of Ireland’s culinary culture, and offer this with an easy-to-navigate interactive functionality.”