Top 2012 Performance Trends for Incentive Travel

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Peering into the looking glass for incentive travel trends, one key area stands out amongst the rest as a clear and distinct focal point – incentive travel design. The industry has greatly capitalized on driving operational cost efficiencies and achieving flawless execution. But, it’s of even greater importance that we ensure our strategies are leading us down the best paths of participant engagement if we’re going to achieve today’s more aggressive business objectives. This requires a more people-centered set of design practices that provide for approaches that are more connected to and aligned with participant stakeholders. Here are five elements to consider as you begin incentive travel design discussions for future programs:

1. Participant-Driven Design
Participants having a stronger hand in helping co-create incentive travel design will continue to rise. While we’ve tended to ask participants in the past what they thought about program experiences, we’re realizing more and more that we also need to ask them what they think as well - beforehand. It’s this forward looking view that helps organizations unlock the greater potential value that exists for better motivating incentive travel participants. This practice will be the linking pin for those organizations that are looking to move performance outcomes from good to better.

2. Beyond Generational Diversity
Today’s participants are more diverse than ever. This is commonly thought of as “generational differences”, but incentive travel design decisions have to go beyond this as a sole consideration point. For instance, experiential, educational and cultural diversity are other considerations that simple generational segmentations don’t consider. These and other forms of diversity are influencing how we think and act at both the organizational and participant level. The growing engagement of incentive travel participant stakeholders in conversations during the design stage will help lead to improved decisions, stronger motivational appeal, and better business outcomes.

3. Maintaining Motivational Engagement
There have been a number of consolidations – organizationally and incentive travel specific - the past few years, plus a shift to more open-ended incentive program structures. These are a few examples that are resulting in more participation and more earners on programs. So, what about the ability to effectively network, interact between peers, management, leadership, etc.? That doesn’t have to diminish, and organizations are looking for what their best options are from the participants’ viewpoint. These are resulting in program waves, where two or more groups follow one another at a destination to maintain cost and operational efficiencies but also retain high levels of engagement with more manageable attendee levels. In addition, organizations are also creating tiered performance thresholds; of which, keep earners engaged even after they achieve minimum program goals so that they have the opportunity to further plus-up their reward and recognition experience even further.

4. Family Friendly Incentive Travel
About 70 percent of American children live in households where both parents are in the workforce. Now, add to that that the average American only has 13 days off per year. Sure, we now have more mobility thanks to technology, but nearly half of American workers are now bringing work home with them regularly. Incentive travel family participants are struggling to create some degree of work/life balance. Program design considerations with family friendly guest policy features will create a significant shift for incentive travel strategies over the next few years. As such, organizations need to avoid making broad assumptions and gain a clearer perspective on how they can be not only more accommodating, but friendlier to participants with a family. What’s the potential for distraction from agendas? Would participants’ without children mind? Do we help pay for, subsidize or create buy-in rate options? These and other questions need to be identified and answered to secure the longer-term relevancy of your program’s design.

5. Redesigning Qualification Structures
So, the waters of open-ended versus closed-ended qualification structures will be tested once again, but there’s more to it. Here’s the thing, this approach to rewarding and recognizing performance comes with higher performance standards for achievement. A limiting factor is that closed-ended incentive travel qualification structures are often meaningful to only a discrete number within the participant base – top performing “A-players”. Breakthrough performance will require new thinking about how to engage the broader participant audience. This will bring in deeper discussions on qualification structures (open vs. closed) as well as the potential returns for added, more targeted incentive travel program tiers – think of these as programs based upon what levels of performance participants achieve. These added programs might involve different features, or be totally separate designs to provide a stairway of motivated performance.

Understanding what’s important from the participants’ viewpoint has to do more with what views are shared between the organization and their program participants – past, present and future. This doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it has to involve active and on-going efforts to clearly understand and gain insights on participants’ needs, wants and preferences. Every organization is unique, so too are their incentive travel participants. Running a one-size-fits-all design approach can be a gamble and operational hazard in the short, mid and long-term.

Incentive Travel Council Honors GROWMARK's Dana Weaver as Advocate of the Year

October 10, 2011 – Naperville, IL – The Incentive Travel Council (ITC) has named Dana Weaver, marketing services manager of GROWMARK, as its 2011 Advocate of the Year. GROWMARK is a regional agricultural cooperative based in Bloomington, Ill.

This marks the third Advocate of the Year Award presented by the ITC, which is a strategic industry group under the Incentive Marketing Association (IMA). It recognizes an individual, business, or organization that demonstrates outstanding leadership in enhancing, educating, and/or promoting incentive travel as a value driver for achieving organizational performance.

At the ITC awards ceremony, held Tues., Oct. 4, 2011 in conjunction with the Motivation Show, Jim Ruszala of Maritz Travel, who nominated Weaver, said, “Dana has become a significant asset to the Incentive Travel Council and the industry as a whole. From various speaking engagements, and panel discussions, to the sharing of best practices and further perspectives, Dana has been a true leader in helping our industry understand and further tap into the fuller potential value of incentive travel.”

ITC President Carol Wain said, “Our industry is indeed fortunate to have individuals like Dana Weaver, who, as an incentive travel adopter and buyer, has made a significant impact in clearly articulating the value that incentive travel provides both to the companies and the travelers alike.”

“I am honored to be recognized by the ITC,” Weaver said. “At our company, it’s a privilege to recognize our top achievers with rewards that are meaningful, motivational and memorable. I truly believe travel incentive programs provide the most trophy value for our participants.”

Weaver joins both Dahlton Bennington of the SFN Group and G.J. Hart of the Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain (who is now with California Pizza Kitchen), as Advocate of the Year winners. “Together, these individuals have and continue to help shed stronger light onto the significance of incentive travel, both at the organizational and participant level,” Wain said.

Why Your Participants Should Design Your Next Incentive Travel Program

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True or False? Asking participants to help design an incentive travel program will only drive up costs and make it more difficult to appease all their wishes.

Answer: False. Instinct, past experience, managerial judgment, beliefs and budgets are simply not enough to effectively drive participant engagement and business performance. Planners need the participants’ insights.

Times, and probably the people involved in your incentive travel program, have significantly changed. Incentive travel strategies aimed to effectively motivate the behavior of program participants must change as well. Generational, ethnic, family structure, and the plethora of social and economic forces impacting your participant base is having a profound effect on what people want from your incentive travel program.

Considering this, incentive travel participants need to be viewed as and treated more like a stakeholder. In our opinion, they are the key stakeholder. Why? Your success hinges on whether these individuals commit to achieving your goals and targets. Given the importance of personal commitment, it just makes sense for your employees and channel partners to have a voice regarding program design. At the end of the day, these individuals will weigh the experience against the required level of investment of both their and their families’ time and effort.

Authors James Gilmore and Joseph Pine first coined the words “Experience Economy” in a 1998 Harvard Business Review article Welcome to the Experience Economy. Paraphrasing a bit for the purposes of our industry, people seek unique and personally meaningful experiences. Travel programs represent some of the best opportunities to create these very meaningful and highly motivating experiences. Getting the most from your incentive program requires a more complete understanding of the motivations of these individuals. This understanding translates into better program design and a better experience.

Organizations that view incentive travel programs as part of a broader strategy of creating “places of engagement” for their people can achieve great results. It all starts with placing a seat at the stakeholder table for the participant to help better inform incentive travel design decisions. After all, it’s the people who create the business results. It makes practical business sense to include them in the conversation.

What do Incentive Travel Participants Think about their Program?

The Site International Foundation and the Incentive Travel Council (ITC) commissioned Dr. Scott Jeffries and Monmouth University to conduct a joint study focused on The Incentive Travel Participant Viewpoint.

With the study currently underway, insights and findings will be shared over a period of time beginning with initial outcomes in mid-October release, providing dialogue for 2011 IMEX America and the Site International Conference events in Las Vegas. The full published report will be released at the end of the year and will be distributed globally via both organizations.

"Collaborations like this one are important and benefit a diverse group of industry professionals, said Steve O’Malley, SITE International Foundation president. “When we leverage the power of shared resources we can deliver some amazing data. We are positive The Incentive Travel Participant Viewpoint study will deliver insight into participant behaviors and key motivators that each of us can consider as we design and deliver extraordinary motivational programs in the future."

Jim Ruszala, past president of the ITC commented, "The incentive industry has made strong strides over the past few years in better providing transparency into the business values achieved through incentive programs. However, the industry is still starving for specific incentive travel based insights on ways to improve that business value by creating more meaningful, motivational and memorable experiences for its incentive travel participants.  Organizations are increasingly facing new as well as unique business challenges every day. To overcome these challenges and help achieve business performance objectives, we need to approach incentive travel design differently with an added attention towards how we can better engage and improve participant experiences.”

Why Independent Dealer Networks Should Consider Incentive Travel

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True or False?  Incentive Travel Improves Channel Performance

Answer: True. Incentive travel helps organizations achieve targeted business performance goals, but they also represent a sound approach towards establishing and building strong relationships in your independent distributor channel.

Recently, one of our clients asked us to help provide further performance insights into their channel-based incentive travel program. This organization has run an incentive travel program for its dealer network for several years. While it understood the sales volume created by the dealers that earned the trip, it also wanted to understand other ways in which the program created value. Essentially, we wanted to answer the question – how has this long running, annual program provided value from the participants’ viewpoint? Here’s what we found…

Participants firmly perceive the incentive travel program as a strong and effective influencer in helping the organization drive performance through the dealer channel. A common participant response was, “the opportunity to earn the incentive travel award greatly encouraged me to increase my performance efforts.” As for whether the program was creating brand loyalty and advocacy, our findings were best summarized with another participant statement that said, “The program creates loyalty to the company, showing myself and other dealers just how much the organization cares and wants to help us.”

By continuing to establish and nurture dealer relationships through an incentive travel strategy, our client also created and experienced added, long-term value that went beyond short-term measurements. Program participant comments such as “I think the best part (as always) is networking with other distributors” and “[the award program is] a great way to build a long-term bond with other distributors” echoed throughout our findings.

To the dealer, relationship building is viewed as a high-value opportunity. With other channel representatives on the program, participants are continually afforded a setting where they can establish and build relationships with one another. This creates substantial, long-term value, as participants are able to further exchange ideas and insights on best practices, market shifts, challenges and business opportunities.

If you have distributors, sales networks or other channel partners, where are they fitting into the incentive travel mix?

Should Meetings be a Part of the Incentive Travel Mix?

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True or False?  The Integration of meeting elements into group incentive travel experiences is a new trend?

Answer: False.  The inclusion of formal meeting elements into group incentive travel programs has been a mainstay since its inception.

According to a SITE International Foundation 2010 survey, the trend of including business meetings in incentive travel programs will continue to grow over the next three years. So, why add meeting elements to an incentive travel program?

• Recognition - Calling out and recognizing an individual, in a formal meeting setting, with their peers, leadership team and guest(s) represents the gratifying highlight of the motivational experience for incentive travel earners.
• Communicating Future Business Direction - With top performers all in one place at the same time, this affords a great opportunity to provide a preview into future business direction to inform, excite and motivate earners.
• Networking Opportunities - Formal meeting time where program earners can network and interact with managers, leaders and other top performers to share and discuss best practices or market trends helps prepare for and align individual performance with future business objectives.
• Tax Laws - Participants on an incentive travel program maybe issued 1099’s or have the fair market value reported as income. Adding business meetings can reduce or eliminate this tax burden on your participants.
• Helping to Avoid Reputational Risk - Some organizations are concerned and want to minimize any potential risk that can damage their business brand by including more business meeting related content.

While this trend is anticipated to increase, it’s also met with a growing concern from incentive travel stakeholders. The potential impact on the participants’ viewpoint of what creates the type of experience that will inspire people to achieve the aggressive goals established for the program is a legitimate cause for concern. A careful and thoughtful approach is required to “strike the right balance” and avoid diluting the motivational value participants perceive in the incentive travel program’s design.

In the end, presenting a program that hits the mark for the “Wow” factor is key in getting the attention and active engagement of your participants.
What do you think?

Is My Travel Program "Reward and Recognition" or "Incentive" Based?

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True or False? “Reward and Recognition” and “Incentive” programs are really the same thing.

Answer: False. Reward and recognition programs focus on reinforcing behaviors by providing awards and personal recognition based upon an observable behavior. Incentive programs inspire participants by influencing efforts that help achieve future business goals.

Think about the basic qualification structure of these programs. Often, open-ended qualification structures are more incentive-based while closed-ended qualification structures reflect a reward and recognition orientation. Closed-ended structures tend to fall in line with the Pareto principle (80/20 rule), where 80 percent of your performance is contributed by 20 percent of participants (“A” level or top performers).

The challenge with closed-ended qualifications occurs when only the top portion of your sales team feels they can achieve the award. Also, keep in mind that the effectiveness of a program’s performance can be misleading as “A” level performers tend to perform despite what’s going on around them. As such, if your next level of participants (“B” level performers) are not motivated by the program design, it will not achieve the best possible results. Representing the majority of your participant base, “B” level performers can easily be disengaged from your program’s sales targets because of a closed-ended qualification structure. They already know who is going to earn the award and don’t feel that they can achieve the qualifying performance objectives.

Consider the situation faced by Pacific Life. While their “A” players were motivated by the incentive travel program, their “B” players weren’t because they didn’t view the sales targets as attainable. Maritz Travel suggested a shift to an open-ended qualification structure that kept the top performer program intact, but extended the motivational value for mid-level performers by establishing attainable sales targets that would not have qualified them under the old closed-ended qualification structure. These targets represented significant new volume for the company and resulted in “B” level performers contributing 80 percent of total sales growth for the year and $14 million in incremental profit.

By focusing on these two distinct concepts companies can create more effective programs.

Generational Differences and Incentive Travel Program Design

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True or False? Incentive Travel participant preferences vary greatly based on generational differences.

Answer: False. Based upon a National study by Maritz, there are actually more commonalities than there are differences. The key is discovering what program design decisions are common versus unique and how the order of individual preferences fall.

During the design phase of any travel incentive program, stakeholders and planners face the harsh realities of making choices that need to be the right one’s to effectively drive the broadest levels of motivational value. This challenge is made even more difficult by an increasingly diverse participant base. Making the right decisions in program design go a long way towards creating the “WOW!” factor that drives excitement, buzz and performance.

Demographics have been used for years to cluster and understand what might best motivate incentive program participants. One of the most frequently used demographic categories is based upon age, which in turn also allows us to breakdown a participant base into what is commonly known as generational segments. These generational segments are then used to infer program design choices.

Generational segments are greatly influenced by such areas as the world events and societal trends that they are raised within. In addition, we tend to think about how generations tend to think, feel and react differently throughout the course of their life. However, the important thing here is that generational differences and lifecycle assumptions alone can also be quite misleading.

Based on a number of surveys completed by Maritz that look at the question of effective program design, we can see some interesting information on the role generational attributes play in incentive program design. For example, a large insurance company client, with many of their earners in the 50-60 year old range, discovered that their greatest design request was that the guest policy be expanded from being able to take children on family friendly programs to also including grandchildren.

While generational segments are important, they are not the only consideration for program design. Overall, the focus shouldn’t be just about generational differences, but rather more so on how you better engage different people in more meaningful ways to drive performance. Attending to this fundamental shift will help better shape incentive travel program design as it relates to destination, activity, rule structuring, promotional communications and other decisions to achieve stronger and broader motivational appeal and value for participants.

Why Incentives Trump Cash

Great article featured in Meetings and Incentive Travel titled, "Why Incentives Trump Cash".  Take a look to further seperate fact from fiction as to why non-cash based incentives, specifically Travel, create more Motivational, Meaningful and Memorable experiences that provide both immediate and long-term tangible and intangible returns - click here.

Increase Motivational Value with Family Friendly Incentive Travel Programs

American culture and the work place have experienced dramatic changes, especially over this past year. Today dual income families are the norm. Unemployment is up. So is the average work week. The corporate demand to do more with less has had a significant impact on incentive program participants … and their families. The result is a significant increase on the stress levels of the family.

Incentive travel programs have long been a key way to motivate performance by providing experiences that embody attributes such as camaraderie, credibility, respect, fairness and pride – all key attributes associated with the 100 Best Companies from the Great Place to Work Institute. So how does the family play into this?

Incentive travel programs aren’t just an opportunity to recognize and reward the employee, channel partner or customer for their commitment and achievement; but, a chance to recognize the sacrifices and support the family made as a whole. Including the family in the program can greatly boost participant engagement and performance.

Leading organizations are turning toward the adoption of more family friendly program elements. The main reason, it’s a significant motivational factor that provides families the opportunity to share in striving for and achieving incentive goals, as well as in the reward and recognition. After all, participants with families look to their spouse and children for support and want to have an opportunity to reward them as well.