Unlike other elements of a corporate travel program, which are guided by where your employees need to go, incentive travel is about where your employees, executives, and business partners want to go. With options and expectations at an all-time high, how do you create standout incentive travel experiences that meet a variety of goals within a fixed budget?
Why incentive travel?
Strategic incentive travel offers benefits to a company’s employees and partners (including resellers and affiliates), as well as the business itself.
Thanks to carefully curated incentive travel itineraries, employees and business partners have the opportunity to see and do things they may never have the ability to book for themselves. These experiences enrich travelers’ lives in ways that other incentives, like bonuses and corporate merchandise, simply cannot. Because of how unique incentive travel often is, and what individuals must achieve to qualify for it, attending one of these trips may be a personal goal and even a career highlight. This type of achievement garners recognition, both within a company and potentially throughout an industry. Qualifying for a trip is often part of reaching a milestone that demonstrates proficiency to potential customers.
Companies reap the benefits of employees and partners working toward the qualifying goal(s) of incentive travel. Incentive travel may also increase loyalty, reducing employee turnover and the associated costs of replacing experienced talent.
Creating Motivating Experiences
For an incentive travel program to be most effective for a business, it needs to be truly motivating—more so than other types of incentives. Attendees are most excited about these elements of incentive travel:
- New, once-in-a-lifetime destinations and accommodations
- Thoughtful itineraries that include both free time and cultural experiences, as well as wellness-focused elements (particularly for millennials and Gen Z travelers)
- Experiences worth sharing on social media and discussing with coworkers who didn’t attend
- The ability to bring a guest and extend a trip (either before or after group travel)
Delivering ROI
Planning once-in-a-lifetime incentive travel can be fun, but as part of a travel program, it also needs to meet organizational goals and remain on budget. Depending on your company’s goals, return on investment may include harder to measure benefits like company culture and employee engagement as well as the direct impact of metrics like increased market share and sales. As how organizations do business evolves, so should incentive travel. Consider these ways to maximize the value of an incentive trip:
- Expand incentive travel beyond the traditionally sales-based roles that qualify for these programs to motivate employees throughout the organization. This may require measuring success with metrics beyond directly attributable sales.
- Measure impact on employee satisfaction and retention to quantify savings on recruiting and onboarding.
- Control costs with creative solutions that don’t negatively impact the incentive travel experience, such as reducing physical gifts onsite or choosing closer destinations.
- Create efficiencies and personalize the attendee experience with artificial intelligence (AI).
- Leverage your existing travel program and partners to optimize the booking process.
Find Inspiration
Recommendations from our meetings and incentives travel experts.
