This 12-week programme helps hospitality businesses in County Carlow make technology work harder for them. It focuses on practical decisions and real results, giving you a clear digital plan built around your goals and the hands-on support to act on it, all as part of a small group of Carlow businesses on the same journey. No technical background is needed.

This programme is ideal for:

• Publicans, vintners and bar owners
• Café, restaurant and food business owners
• Guesthouse, B&B and accommodation providers
• Tourism and visitor attraction operators
• Hospitality business owners and managers across Co. Carlow who are ready to make better use of technology in their business

By the end of this programme, participants will be able to:

• Link your business goals to clear digital priorities and set success criteria you can measure
• Build a strategic digital plan tailored to your business rather than a generic template
• Map your key processes and identify which ones to automate first
• Choose the right digital tools and systems, and avoid paying for ones you do not need
• Use AI in practical ways across marketing, sales, operations and customer service
• Select the digital sales channels that suit your business model, from booking systems to e-commerce
• Set up digital marketing and lead generation that brings in the right customers
• Use simple dashboards and data to make better day-to-day decisions
• Take a digital project from plan through to implementation with confidence
• Complete a Strategic Digital Optimisation Plan and a Digital Transformation Blueprint for your business
• Prepare a Grow Digital Voucher application, ready to submit and draw down funding before the year ends
• Present a focused capstone plan for the one change that will make the biggest difference to your business

Course Content: Twelve-Week Programme

The curriculum is grouped into four stages. Each workshop builds a skill you apply directly to your own business and to your capstone project.

Stage 1: Strategic Direction and Digital Foundations (Weeks 1 to 3)

Workshop 1: Strategic Digital Planning

• Linking your business goals to digital priorities
• Creating a digital strategy canvas
• Setting success criteria
• Identifying candidates for your capstone project

Workshop 2: Digital Transformation and Change Management

• What digital transformation means for a small business
• Why digital projects fail, and how to avoid it
• Change management for small teams
• Stakeholder mapping

Workshop 3: Business Process Automation

• Mapping the processes that matter most in your business
• Identifying which tasks are worth automating
• Understanding the different levels of automation
• Selecting one process to automate

Stage 2: Systems, Tools, AI and Automation (Weeks 4 to 6)

Workshop 4: Selecting Digital Tools

• Auditing the tools you already use
• A simple framework for choosing software
• Knowing when to optimise what you have and when to replace it
• Shortlisting tools for your capstone project

Workshop 5: AI for Small Business

• A clear, jargon-free overview of AI
• Practical use cases across marketing, sales, operations and customer service
• Hands-on with accessible AI tools

Workshop 6: Advanced AI and Automation

• Combining AI, automation tools and your core business systems
• Designing workflows that save you time
• Your first implementation

Stage 3: Building the Digital Revenue Engine (Weeks 7 to 9)

Workshop 7: Digital Sales Channels

• E-commerce, booking systems, marketplaces, digital products and AI-enabled services
• Choosing the right channel for your business model

Workshop 8: Digital Marketing and Customer Engagement

• An overview of a modern marketing system
• Getting clear on your perfect-fit customer
• AI-supported content and email workflows

Workshop 9: Traffic and Lead Generation

• Turning traffic into leads and qualified opportunities
• Organic and paid methods
• Building an effective funnel
• Designing the lead generation plan for your capstone

Stage 4: Data, Performance and Delivery (Weeks 10 to 12)

Workshop 10: Data and Analytics for Decision-Making

• The metrics that actually matter for your business
• Building simple dashboards
• Setting a reporting rhythm
• Using project scorecards

Workshop 11: Delivering and Scaling Digital Projects

• A practical framework for delivering projects
• Phased implementation
• Tracking the benefits
• Managing risk and dependencies

Workshop 12: Capstone Presentations and Roadmap

• Presenting your project to the group
• Peer feedback
• Planning your next steps

What You Will Complete

Over the twelve weeks you will produce a set of practical outputs you can use straight away:

• A Strategic Digital Optimisation Plan built specifically for your business
• A Digital Transformation Blueprint, a clear visual summary of your plan for ongoing reference
• A Grow Digital Voucher application, targeted for around Week 9, so you are ready to apply and draw down funding
• A Capstone implementation plan for the specific business challenge you choose to tackle, presented to the group at the closing session

Delivery Format

• A half-day in-person kick-off workshop in Carlow to meet the group and set your goals
• Weekly online group workshops across the twelve weeks, with short pre-recorded modules released in advance
• Fortnightly one-to-one consultancy calls for each business, giving you confidential time to work through your own challenges
• Around one hour of pre-recorded video content per module, available on demand throughout the programme and afterwards
• A half-day in-person closing session in Carlow, combining capstone presentations with a hands-on technical clinic
• Places are limited to a small group of eight businesses, so you get regular one-to-one support throughout

Book Your Place

Places on this programme are limited and hospitality businesses in County Carlow are given priority. If you are ready to build a clear digital plan and put it into action, register your interest with Local Enterprise Office Carlow today to secure your place.

Trainer: Mícheál O'Neill

Mícheál O'Neill is a digital transformation consultant and CEO of Kelso Digital Limited. Before founding Kelso Digital, he led the digital transformation of a small business group of twenty-five staff across five business units, so he has made the same decisions about software, suppliers, team skills and budget that small business owners face every day.

Through Kelso Digital, Mícheál has delivered more than one hundred digital transformation engagements with Irish small businesses and trained over 1,500 entrepreneurs. His consulting work spans Ireland, the UK, the EU, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America.

He holds three current AI and digital transformation credentials directly relevant to this programme: Applied Agentic AI for Organizational Transformation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2026), an Advanced Diploma in Artificial Intelligence from University College Dublin (2025), and a Diploma in AI and Digital Transformation from University College Dublin (2025).

Mícheál is the sole delivery consultant across the twelve weeks, which keeps the methodology, quality and approach consistent for every business in the cohort.

Logistics

Programme dates: 10 September 2026 to 6 December 2026 (twelve weeks)

In-person kick-off: Half-day session, Thursday 10 September 2026

In-person closing session: Half-day session, Thursday 3 December 2026

Online sessions: All sessions between the kick-off and closing are delivered online

Venue for in-person sessions: Enterprise House, O'Brien Road, Carlow, R93 Y0Y3

Registration deadline: Friday 4 September 2026

Investment: €50 per participant. Places are limited, so book early to secure your seat.

This programme is open to hospitality-based businesses operating in Co.Carlow.