The IRF submitted the following letter to the editor in response to a recent Wall Street Journal article about incentive travel. The article reports that Charles Schwab Corp. is scaling back its incentive trip to Hawaii and instead paying top performers $5,000 and giving them a paid week off. The article cites “reputational risks” associated with award programs. IRF’s Chief Academic Advisor Allan Schweyer provides a clear counterargument that you may find useful in your discussions with your management and clients about the effectiveness of incentive travel as a motivational tool.
Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE), Incentive Research Foundation (IRF), and Financial and Insurance Conference Professionals (FICP) are proud to announce the release of the first joint study of the global incentive travel industry. Incentive Travel Industry Index powered by SITE Index, IRF Outlook and FICP is a landmark for the industry, providing unprecedented, consolidated insights into the current state of incentive travel and where it is headed.
Conducted in association with J.D. Power, the study is a wide-ranging analysis of business conditions, attitudes and expectations impacting the incentive travel and motivational events industry worldwide. With over 1,000 respondents from 80 countries, it is the largest survey ever conducted of senior players in the incentive travel industry, doubling responses from past individual efforts and netting new insights based on combined questioning.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The 5 key take-aways are:
- Budgets for 2018 are up
- More qualifiers than ever
- Incentive as builder of workplace culture
- Increase in use of All Inclusive Destinations
- Wellness is the new golf
BUDGETS ARE UP…
- 54% of all buyers report increase in budgets
- Per person median is $4,000 – same as last year, but $1,000 more than 2016 figure
- Per person average for corporate buyers is $8,151
- Per person average for agencies is $5,193
- Wide range per person spend on incentives with some in the region of $50,000
MORE QUALIFIERS THAN EVER
- Globally 65% of all buyers are increasing the number of qualifiers (58% in US, 67% in EU and 73% in Asia)
- Incentive Houses are seeing significant increases – in 2017 54% reported an increase in qualifiers, in 2018 this is 71%
INCENTIVES AS A BUILDER OF WORKPLACE CULTURE
- Sales and profitability are still the top reasons
- “Better relationship building between employees and management” was the 5th most important objective for incentives in 2017 but it’s now the 2nd
- Also ranking in Top 5 – “improved employee engagement and morale” and “Better relationship building between employees”
INCREASE IN USE OF “ALL-INCLUSIVE” DESTINATIONS
- The number of Buyers taking steps to reduce costs has been increasing every year, moving from 73% in 2015 to 78% in 2016, 80% in 2017 and 82% in 2018
- Use of all inclusive destinations much more pronounced amongst Incentive Houses (48% are doing it) than corporate end users (26% are doing it)
WELLNESS IS THE NEW GOLF
- When asked about “inclusions” in incentive travel programs, 86% of buyers highlighted Wellness (Yoga, Healthy meals etc.)
- Wellness (86%) trumps CSR (74%)
- CSR falling out of favor particularly with Corporate Buyers (down from 94% in 2017 to 73% in 2018)
