Integrating meetings and incentive travel is becoming a more common practice. Companies are taking advantage of the situation when they have their highest performers gathered in one place at the incentive travel destination. They are providing exclusive business content to help their top performers continue to grow and align with the company's business objectives.
Successfully incorporating meetings and incentive travel requires more than your own experience and intuition. It demands a clear understanding of the preferences of your audience. You have to find the right mix of location, activities and content, meeting format and length, guest policy and rule structure for incentive tours and travel. All of these attributes work together to impact the effectiveness of your meeting and incentive travel reward. Ideally your business objectives will be purposefully woven into everything in your plan.
Explore Maritz Travel for more details about how you can get more from your incentive tours and travel program.
Issues Impacting Meetings and Incentive Travel
Increasing expectations from participants: If your incentive travel reward has been around for a long time, your repeat qualifiers are now savvy, world travelers. Every year you dazzle them, every year you make your job harder. Now it's even more important to get the insight into your people to find what is personally meaningful and motivating to them. Including meetings with exclusive business content may be considered very valuable by your top performers.
Audience diversity: Many meeting and incentive travel initiatives are facing significantly more diverse audiences than ever: multiple generations; broad geographic reach; various life styles and life stages; and simple individual preferences vary greatly. Each person brings a different set of expectations around what is an effective reward or compelling meeting.
Proof of value for investment: As market conditions continue to shift, many meeting and incentive travel planners are being challenged to better measure the impact of the event and how they support corporate objectives. In addition, faced with the threat of budget cuts, they are looking for insights for continuous improvement and the task of doing more with less.
Maritz: A Unique Approach for Improving the Effectiveness of Meetings and Incentive Travel
Our unique process is a comprehensive, people-driven approach that includes a proven research component. The full target population for the meeting or incentive travel reward is invited to participate in the survey. Respondents are presented with a wide range of program elements in different combinations and are asked to weigh their importance. Meeting and incentive travel elements such as trip length, time of year, destination, guest policy, general session speakers, meeting format, activities etc. are evaluated. The results of the survey give senior management and meeting planners real data to back up program enhancements or deletions. Attendees experience the changes and feel they have co-created the program.
One client used this approach to develop an event measurement scorecard. It measured pre- and post-event scores against participants' understanding, belief, or commitment to corporate goals and messages. By comparing the pre- and post-event research, the client was able to see the marketing message absorption after the trip remained neutral to negative. This provided the event team the opportunity to create a communications plan beyond the event to improve the message absorption. Had they not run the pre- and post-event research, this need would have gone unmeasured.
Maritz: Where Successful Incentive Tours and Travel Programs Begin
If you want to take your meetings and incentive travel programs to the next level, turn to the global leader in incentive tours and travel. With our experience and expertise, Maritz can help you provide unforgettable experiences for your participants, planners and stakeholders. With our unique approach we can help you improve the effectiveness of your meetings and incentive travel rewards. And ultimately, Maritz will help you develop a meeting and incentive travel strategy that drives business results. Are you ready for logistical expertise, more effective outcomes and strategic alignment of your meeting and incentive travel strategies? Then it’s time to contact the incentive travel experts at Maritz today.
Other Maritz Services
Customer Loyalty Cards
Product Launch
Corporate Hospitality & Entertainment
Incentive Travel Specialists