Incentive travel program is a motivational tool to enhance productivity or achieve business objectives in which participants earn the reward based on a specific level of achievement set forth by management. Earners are rewarded with a trip and the program is designed to recognize earners for their achievements.
What are the methods used in determining the destination of the incentive travel
1. Determine the exact nature of business and pleasure in your program and choose a destination with resources and attractions suitable to your agenda.
2. Look carefully at cost, but don't rule out international programs based on misconceptions. Generally, if you are planning a pure incentive travel program, you can use offshore or domestic destinations freely without regard to tax considerations.
Don't rule out such distant destinations as Asia or Australia without closely considering flight schedules. The airlines often have convenient flights allowing the group to arrive in the Orient at a reasonable hour and to return home the same day it left (local time).
3. Look at the demographic mix of your target audience, as well as its travel experience. If the audience travels a lot, you may have to be more inventive when selecting your destination. If it is an audience with little travel experience, you may want to stay closer to home.
4. Look for a destination with plenty of experience with incentive travel. You can often determine this by asking if the tourist board has a specialist for incentive travel and meetings. Find out if that tourist board, in turn, can recommend suppliers with specific incentive travel experience.
5. If you must travel close to home for budgetary or other reasons, don't worry. With a creative destination management company (otherwise known as ground operators), you can often create interesting events in the most familiar of places.
6. Look at what your competitors are doing. Many companies that offer incentive travel to dealers and distributors must realize that their competitors are doing the same thing. You want to make sure that your destination is unique and different, especially from a competitors program operating the same year. The use of individual incentive travel has grown increasingly popular at companies that want to let their winners travel independently. Most, however, are simply certificate programs that individual winners can redeem at will.