In our introduction to travel incentives blog What are Travel Incentives and Why are They Good for Business?, we covered what travel incentives are, and why they’re gaining back popularity.
In this 3-Part Series, we’ll dive deeper into how they can be used in your business strategy, the top industries that find success with them, and how to build your travel incentive program for business success and growth.
What does success look like for a travel incentive program?
Many incentive programs share a common goal of using rewards to motivate, engage, and build connections, ultimately helping to achieve business objectives. Travel rewards are no different; they can serve as a sales incentive to boost the profitability of your business or as a way to enrich your relationships with key partners and clients.
The IRF’s Anatomy of a Successful Incentive Travel Program report, which studied how using travel incentives to motivate employees affected a certain company, concluded that:
Travel rewards had a significant positive impact on individual motivation, performance, employee retention, company culture, and profitability.
These are the factors the study identified as traits that made the travel incentive program successful:
- Criteria for earning rewards had clear ties to business goals.
- Communication about the program and progress toward goals was open and consistent.
- The program included exciting destinations, leisure activities, and more.
- Executives and managers acted as hosts, showing the company’s commitment to the program.
- The company kept precise records of reward earners’ productivity and contribution to the business
Aside from driving sales, travel rewards can give your senior management an opportunity to strengthen their relationships in a luxurious, relaxing setting. A successful travel incentive program also gives you an opportunity to build and solidify connections among clients and business partners, who will feel that your company values their support and instills a sense of loyalty.
Your incentive travel experiences could involve group activities around their destination, such as sightseeing cultural wonders, luxury dinners, and the types of bucket-list adventures you can only find far from home. Experiencing these rare events together is one of the best ways to form powerful bonds, whether you’re with coworkers or clients.
Therefore, not only does incentive travel boost team performance at work, but it also creates ties that enhance your company’s networking and drive internal synergy among senior management.
What do travel incentives look like?
Travel incentives can take various forms, ranging from small rewards to make a business trip more fun to big prizes like a vacation for an incentive recipient and their family. Your company might pay for a week’s stay at a beachside hotel in the Caribbean or give digital gift cards that help pay for flights and accommodations to encourage employees to take vacations.
Gift cards are a popular incentive for business rewards programs because you can easily personalize the gift and scale the dollar amounts, and they work just as well for travel. With gift cards from brands like Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, and AirBnB, you can help employees achieve the getaway of their dreams, give senior management excursion opportunities, or reward a big deal closing with a fancy hotel voucher.
Visa incentive cards are great rewards that allow you to give employees and clients a gift card with your company logo on the front, which they can use anywhere that accepts Visa cards. You might reward your employees' achievements by providing loaded Visa cards when they travel for corporate events, or foster client loyalty by offering to fund a short-term getaway for your largest clients.
To recap and add a few more examples, your travel incentives could be gift cards for the following travel experiences:
- Hotels
- Flights
- Restaurants
- Rideshares
Overall, travel incentives are a great way to reward employees, customers, or business partners for their hard work and loyalty. Not only do they motivate people to work harder and build connections that will last, but they also make them feel valued and appreciated.
Unlock the benefits of travel incentives
Incorporating travel incentives into your business strategy is a great way to drive sales performance, strengthen relationships with key clients and partners, boost employee retention rates, create an enjoyable company culture—and ultimately achieve your desired goals.
With the right approach, clear communication, precise tracking of rewards criteria, and exciting travel experiences, you can ensure that your incentive program will be successful in helping you reach your business objectives.
In our next blog post in this 3-part series on travel incentives, we’ll cover the top industries that benefit from incentive programs. Stay tuned!
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