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Looking for a Good Corporate Travel Trip Provider?

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Each year, thousands of companies send top performing employees on corporate travel trips — also called “incentive travel trips” — that serve as performance-based rewards. In addition to functioning as a show of appreciation for great work, a corporate travel trip serves as a motivator to continue the excellent performance and qualify for next year’s travel trip. This is why many companies wisely use the services of a corporate travel trip provider.

What Makes a Good Travel Trip Provider?

When it comes to service quality, the incentive travel industry is like any other. Some providers exceed your expectations, while others leave you feeling like you didn’t get a good return on your investment. In many cases, one or more of the following factors separates an unforgettable travel experience that leaves people wanting more from one that leaves more to be desired.

  1. Destinations

Any destination that’s safe and legal to travel to should be an option. However, the final destination should be world class, not just the best location a particular region or nation has to offer. When selecting a destination, the emphasis should be on choosing one that’s truly unique in a positive way.

Corporate travel destinations often feature nice things you might experience on a summer vacation, such as good weather, gorgeous scenery, and historical sites. But they tend to be places sought out by sophisticated travelers who want to see the best the world has to offer.

  1. Activities

Activities can be separated into three phases: activities while traveling to the destination, activities while there, and activities while journeying back home. Like destinations, activities should be highly distinctive — and this is where a good corporate travel provider really excels.

Instead of only scheduling your group to attend activities that are common to the destination, a good planner will actually create activities, the likes of which are difficult to replicate. To see what we mean, check out what our company arranged for a group of colleagues who traveled to Rome.

  1. Travel Staff

To make a corporate travel trip truly relaxing and hassle-free for travelers, good trip planners send along a group of trained travel staff, who leap into action to resolve unforeseen issues, and offer assistance to travelers both individually and as a group. The provider handles all of the planning for the tip, and the travel staff make sure the plans transpire as expected.

  1. Budget

Most memorable corporate travel trips aren’t inexpensive, but the majority of companies that plan the trips do so on a budget. Taking a trip that runs over budget can dampen the excitement for cost-conscious executives and call into question whether a travel trip should be planned next year. A careful cost analysis should be performed before the journey officially begins.

About Our Company

Incentive Travel Solutions is an experienced corporate travel trip provider that plans trips to worldwide locations. In doing so, we create journeys whose destinations, activities, and staff service turn them into memories that last a lifetime, and help bring colleagues closer together as a team through shared travel experiences — all within the client’s budget.

To inquire about our services, please call us today at (704) 540-1482, or send us an email through our contact form. We look forward to helping you reward your top performers, and motivate them to keep up the excellent work to qualify for future travels.

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The Interesting Relationship Between Vacation and Productivity

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We don’t think of employees who take a well-earned vacation as absconding from their work duties, but we commonly perceive vacations as leisurely affairs that, while they provide a much needed break from work life, don’t exactly encourage us to return to the workplace ready to pick up where we left off, because we desire more vacation, not more work.

However, according to a recent report from Project: Time Off — an organization that researches and promotes the benefits of taking vacation from work — that perception is largely incorrect. From the report: “The majority of HR managers agree (77%) that employees who take most or all of their vacation time are more productive in their jobs than those who do not. Further, HR managers believe that taking [and] using vacation time leads to higher performance (75%) and increased job satisfaction (78%).”

When you consider how we view non-human work resources, the report starts sounds spot on. For example, no one with knowledge of IT hardware would expect a desktop to perform like a charm if it wasn’t shut off for a year, and an experienced online marketing manager wouldn’t expect a regional email campaign to generate leads 24/7. Yet, oddly enough, we think of humans, who tire far easier than hardware and software, as being capable of working busy schedules without a break.

“Use It Or Lose It” Vs. “Rollover”

Most companies offer vacation on one of two models: the use it or lose it model, in which employees must use all of their yearly vacation days or relinquish them at year’s end; or the “rollover” model, in which unused vacation days are transferred from one year to the next.

According to the same report, “(85%) of talent managers at ‘use it or lose it’ organizations agree that employees who take most or all of their vacation time are more productive in their jobs — 16-percentage points higher than HR managers at firms with rollover policies (69%). Fully seven in ten respondents (70%) in organizations with a ‘use it or lose it’ policy believe that employees who take all of their vacation will stay with their jobs longer, while just more than half (55%) of those with rollover policies agree.”

One of the biggest reasons for the discrepancy is that companies with rollover vacation policies don’t feel bad about creating a work culture where employees seldom take vacation, because the employees technically don’t lose the vacation time they don’t take. However, once a person racks up hundreds of vacation days, there’s simply not a practical way to take all of them.

Being paid for saved vacation days — which typically happens when you retire or willfully switch employers — is the realistic reward. Yet, as the Project: Time Off report shows, being paid for unused vacation and actually using vacation are dogs of different colors when it comes to employee motivation, employee performance, and even employee attrition. If there’s a central message for employer’s, it’s this: In terms of productivity, not paying for yearly vacation days could end up far costlier than footing the bill for them.

Who We Are

Incentive Travel Solutions is a planner and facilitator of incentive-based travel trips to prime destinations around the globe. Like standard vacation time, travel trips provide a much needed break for hard working employees, and help create a sense of camaraderie between employees that is taken back to the workplace at trip’s end. To inquire about our services, please call us today at (704) 540-1482, or use our contact form. We look forward to hearing from you.

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Sales Incentive Trips: Scenarios for Establishing the Reward Structure

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Sales incentive trips are exactly what they sound like: unique excursions that serve as strong motivators for salespeople to perform at the highest level. However, because the point of the trips is to reward top performance, not every salesperson may qualify to take them. Ultimately, it is up to a company to decide how sales team members will qualify for incentive trips. With this in mind, we take a look at four scenarios for establishing the reward structure for travel trips.

  1. Reward a Certain Percentage of Top Performers

With this option, salespeople qualify for a trip when they fall within a certain percentage range that indicates top performance. For example, in terms of revenue generated from sales, you could reward the top 10 percent or 20 percent of your team with a sales incentive trip. This is a good option because it helps companies predict exactly how much they will spend on the trip.

  1. Reward Salespeople Who Reach a Certain Goal

Another way to establish the reward structure is to reward salespeople with a trip when they reach a pre-set goal. For example, you could offer a trip to employees who generate at least a certain number of quality leads or nurture at least a certain number of leads into clients. This is a good option because it provides employees with a set goal for qualifying for incentive trips.

  1. Reward Salespeople Who are Most Improved

A third option for the reward structure is to offer sales incentive trips to workers who show the most improvement from the previous year based on specific criteria, such as lead development or sales. This is a good option because it gives encouragement to blossoming employees who may not qualify for a trip based on the structures above. The drawback is that top performers may not show significant improvement because they already perform at the highest level.

  1. Reward Levels of Performance With Different Trips

Yet another option for establishing the reward structure is to offer different types of trips to employees who perform at different levels. For example, the top 10 percent of salespeople could be rewarded with a unique trip to an international destination, while the next 10 percent could be rewarded with a tourist trip to a national destination. Some companies aren’t interested in this option due to cost concerns. However, this reward structure is valuable for motivating employees who are on the cusp of top performance to keep working hard and perform better.

Why Use Sales Incentive Trips to Motivate Your Team?

Here are several reasons to use sales incentive trips to motivate your sales team to reach new heights. Some of the most important ones are: What the reward consists of is known from the start, which helps provide motivation to qualify for it; when planned with the help of an incentive travel trip planner, travel trips can truly be once in a lifetime experiences; and highly unique travel trips offer something that many people consider as valuable as money: world class travel.

Incentive Travel Solutions has years of experience in helping companies plan sales incentive trips that are once in a lifetime experiences, and thus motivate sales teams to qualify for the journeys. Regardless of the reward structure you choose, we’ll help you plan a trip whose uniqueness provides your sales team with a strong motivation to qualify for the reward. To start planning a sales incentive trip, call us today at (704) 540-1482 to set up a free consultation.

 

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Motivating Sales: Private Incentive Travel Trips Vs. Performance Bonuses

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Companies that have a sales team spend lots of time and effort searching for talented salespeople. After these workers become employees, companies motivate them to use their talent to the fullest degree by providing them with lucrative, exciting rewards for doing so.

Two common examples of rewards that are offered to top performers on sales teams are private incentive travel trips and performance-based bonuses. Which type of award is more effective for motivating sales throughout the year? In the experience of many companies, private incentive travel trips are more effective than bonuses for the following three reasons, among others.

  1. Top Performers Already Receive Bonuses

Practically every top performing salesperson receives an annual bonus for his or her success in bolstering the company’s bottom line. Consequently, adding an additional, performance-based bonus to the bonus that will already be received is redundant. In terms of motivating top performance, this is why adding an incentive travel trip to the reward structure is more meaningful than tacking on another bonus, especially for workers who already receive top pay.

  1. Trips are Once in a Lifetime Experiences

When private incentive travel trips are planned with the help of an incentive travel trip planner, the goal is to make the excursions as memorable as possible to motivate the sales team to perform at the highest level. Special bonuses can motivate great performance, too. However, because bonuses aren’t as unique as well-planned travel trips, they don’t entail the “once in a lifetime experience” factor that can motivate employees in a way that monetary rewards can’t.

  1. Trips Make it Easy to Envision the Reward

Top performers on the sales team know that they’ll receive an annual, performance-based bonus, but exactly how much the bonus will be is impossible to predict until all of the sales numbers are tallied. Incentive travel trips are different. Salespeople know exactly what they will receive for performing at the highest level, and can constantly envision the reward as they develop quality leads, perform lead nurturing process, and turn prospective clients into clients.

Need Assistance Planning a Travel Trip?

If your company is looking for a new way to motivate salespeople to perform their best, offering private incentive travel trips is a great option for the reasons listed above. However, if you want an incentive travel trip to be so exciting that it provides your sales team with more motivation than a special performance bonus, using the services of an experienced incentive travel trip planner is strongly recommended. This is where Incentive Travel Solutions enters the picture.

For years, we have helped companies plan private incentive travel trips that are once in a lifetime experiences, and thus help to motivate salespeople to perform their best. Rewarding top talent with performance bonuses is important, too, but just as a travel trip can’t take the place of a bonus, a bonus can’t take the place of an awesome travel trip. To get started on planning a trip for your sales team, give us a call today at (704) 540-1482 to schedule a free consultation.

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What are the Benefits of an Incentive Travel Trip?

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Incentive travel trips are a popular way to reward employees for excellent performance in the workplace. As reported on the website smartmeetings.com, according to a recent study from the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF), “At least 46 percent of U.S. businesses use incentive travel”. Furthermore, “U.S. businesses spend $22.5 billion a year on incentive travel.”

Benefits of an Incentive Travel Trip

Companies that shell out thousands of dollars for each employee who qualifies for an incentive travel trip do so out of more than good will. They also offer the trips hoping to receive a tangible return on the investment, particularly in the form of great business performance in the coming year. To this end, companies can benefit from incentive-based trips at least four crucial ways.

  1. Customer Retention

The IRF says that companies with the highest customer retention rate provide group travel to reward annual sales goals. When an incentive travel trip has the desired effect on business productivity by motivating employees to qualify for the next trip, a high rate of customer retention can result. Incentive trips are well-known for helping companies retain talented employees, but they can also help companies retain customers through the efforts of these employees.

  1. Sales Growth

The IRF also lists sales growth as a benefit of using incentive travel as a business reward. Specifically, companies with the highest sales growth offer group travel to reward year-end business goals. In addition to helping their employers retain customers, employees who are motivated to qualify for incentive trips help add new names to the customer roster. The IRF notes that “Incentive travel programs can increase sales productivity by 18 percent”.

  1. Revenue Increases

Growing the customer base is a benefit of incentive travel trips that yields yet another benefit: increased revenue. According to the IRF, companies that offer non-cash rewards experience revenue increases that are three times higher than the national average. Every company wants the bottom line to look better next year than it looks this year. An incentive travel trip can help make the dream of a significant revenue increase a reality.

  1. Excellent ROI

The return on investment (ROI) for incentive travel trips differs in each case. However, the IRF reports that, on average, “well-designed and well-executed incentive travel programs can produce an ROI of up to 112 percent.” The keys to realizing such a profitable ROI, of course, are offering a trip that is “well-designed and well-executed,” which is why many companies entrust the trip planning process to a provider of incentive travel services.

Let Us Plan Your Incentive Travel Trip

The experienced travel trip planners at Incentive Travel Solutions are here to help you plan a well-designed, well-executed travel trip. In creating the trip, we take several measures to ensure its success, including: planning the trip within your budget, selecting unique destinations and activities that are unforgettable, and sending travel staff with you to handle any loose ends.

To learn about additional benefits of incentive travel, give us a call today at (704) 540-1482, or fill out our contact form, to set up a free consultation. We’ll assist you with creating a trip that helps deliver the four benefits above and others. Contact us today to get started!