 American
business spends over $10 billion a year on incentive travel and motivational
meetings, according to industry research. Most major companies with large
sales organizations or reseller networks have elaborate programs to motivate
people through travel.
Incentive travel comes in two forms: "pure" incentive programs that offer
travel as an award, and motivational meetings that use travel as a means
of inspiring the troops and communicating organization goals. The process
of designing incentive travel programs in which people qualify for travel
as an award follows much of the same process covered in sections on Sales,
Reseller, and Employee programs. However, travel
does involve special considerations, which have been outlined in the step-by-step
planning guide below.
Motivational meetings share with incentive travel the need to motivate and
communicate, but they usually do not share the need for specific qualification
criteria or pre-travel communication, since the goal is to do the motivation
at the meeting rather than motivate people to attend. In both pure incentive
travel and motivational meetings, the travel program differs from any other
form of consumer or business travel in that the goal is to inspire and communicate,
rather than simply offer an exciting trip. Whether the incentive trip is
pure fun, entertainment, or enrichment, or the motivational meeting has
long days filled with meetings, both get the best results when everything
is choreographed to inspire the audience. That means coordinating site selection,
transportation, transfers, events, hotels, conference centers, audiovisual
equipment, entertainment, and meals. |
