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Using Corporate Incentive Travel Services: Frequently Asked Questions

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Corporate incentive travel services are designed to help companies create luxurious, unique trips that reward employees for reaching business goals that make them qualify for incentive travel — a form of travel that helps employees come closer together as a team, share unforgettable experiences, and motivates them to qualify for future incentive travel trips.

If your company is looking for new ways to reward performance, and this is your first time considering using corporate incentive travel services, you may have some questions about what you can receive from us a your trusted trip planner. That’s why we’re taking the time to answer some of the most commonly asked questions about our corporate incentive travel services.

  1. Can you help me decide who qualifies for the trip?

Many companies establish their own travel trip qualifications, but we can certainly provide with examples of qualifications that other companies have used to great success. Once you decide how many people you want to potentially qualify the trip, it becomes easier to set qualifications.

  1. Do you facilitate travels to foreign destinations?

Yes. In addition to providing corporate incentive travel services for U.S. destinations, we provide the same services for foreign destinations. As long as it’s safe for you to travel to a particular foreign country, we’ll ensure that you get there in style, and thoroughly enjoy the destination.

  1. How will I handle hotel and travel reservations?

You don’t need to handle hotel and travel reservations; that’s what we’re here for. We have years of experience in airline contract negotiation and negotiating hotel contracts. In addition, we help you select methods of travel and forms of lodging that help make the trip unique.

  1. Can you help me plan an itinerary of activities?

Yes. This is another area of incentive travel that we specialize in. When we plan your travel itinerary, we strive to deliver what we call the “wow factor”, which means that your travelers will literally be wowed by the activities that they experience on the trip, from start to finish.

  1. What role does your on-site travel staff play?

Our on-site travel staff go with you on the trip to handle any unforeseen wants and needs, and to ensure that the travel itinerary delivers the ultra pleasurable experience you anticipate. Moreover, our travel staff let you focus on the trip without worrying about it going as planned.

  1. How long do your travel trips typically last?

How long a trip lasts is ultimately up to you, although the duration of the trip obviously depends on your budget, and what you think delivers a meaningful incentive. With that said, most incentive travel trips last several days — enough time to let you truly enjoy the destination.

Start Planning Your Trip Today

Incentive travel trips are more than unique, enjoyable journeys that create lasting memories among coworkers. They also serve as a major motivator for improved business performance, especially for employees who are compensated to the point that receiving significant, annual salary increases and lucrative, quarterly performance bonuses is nothing novel or new.

To get started on using our corporate incentive travel services to plan a travel trip that rewards your workers in highly unique ways, give us a call today at (704) 540-1482, or fill out our contact form. We look forward to helping you choose the best options for your unique vision of what should comprise an incentive travel trip for your best performers.

 

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Creating Corporate Travel Incentives That Work: Four Considerations

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Corporate travel incentives are popular for motivating employees to perform to the best of their abilities. However, the level of motivation the trips provide is inherently based on the uniqueness and overall quality of the travel experience. To create corporate travel incentives that work for their intended purpose, companies should make at least four considerations when planning inventive-based travel trips: destination, cost, activities, and support from a travel trip planner.

  1. Destination

Because the allure of corporate travel incentives depends heavily on the uniqueness of the travel destination, the goal is to choose a destination that those who qualify the trip will remember for life. For example, while taking a trip to coastal Florida may be enjoyable, for most U.S. citizens, taking a trip to coastal Sardinia would be a far more memorable experience regarding the travel destination. When planning a trip, focus on choosing a rare destination.

  1. Cost

When the cost of incentive travel trips is discussed, the focus is typically on how much a company should spend based on its operating budget. Less discussed is how much money companies should dedicate to making the trip enjoyable and highly memorable to employees. Because the enjoyment of a travel trip naturally motivates workers to qualify for the next trip, focus on creating a trip budget that is large enough to afford a truly unique travel experience.

  1. Activities

The money you set aside for an incentive travel trip naturally determines the activities you enjoy while traveling and how many activities you and your diligent workers get to experience. The activities you choose are based on where you travel and how you get there. However, in all situations, the goal is to select activities that are as pleasurable and unique as the destination itself. The activities you enjoy are largely responsible for creating lasting memories of the trip.

  1. Support

Because corporate travel incentives generally apply to trips that involve several unique activities, special lodging accommodations, and special travel accommodations, it’s a good idea to take your trip with the support of an experienced incentive travel trip planner. The planner can provide support staff that travel with your group to ensure that everything goes as planned, which is an important aspect of motivating employees to qualify for the next incentive travel trip.

Start Planning Your Trip Today
Creating corporate travel incentives that motivate employees to qualify for incentive-based travel trips can be a tedious affair in terms of choosing the right destination, deciding how much to spend on a trip, deciding what activities to participate in while traveling, and receiving third party support to ensure that a trip goes exactly as planned. This is why many companies turn to Incentive Travel Solutions for assistance with planning and executing incentive travel trips.

For your trip to be truly enjoyable, it needs to be hassle-free on your end — and this is what we can help you accomplish. To learn more about how we can assist you with taking a unique, exciting trip that motivates your workers to qualify for the trip and trips thereafter, please call us today at (704) 540-1482 to schedule a free consultation. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Business Travel Programs – Do These Motivators Really Work?

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Business travel programs are a unique way to reward executives and workers who go above and beyond the call of everyday business. However, most companies don’t offer the trips without desiring something in return. They want trips that comprise business travel programs to motivate employees who take the trips to mirror their great performance in the coming year, with qualifying for the next travel trip serving as a primary motivator for maintaining success.

Statistics for Business Travel Programs

Lots of companies have anecdotes about how business travel programs motivate performance. However, before you implement a travel program, it’s a good idea not to put too much stock in another company’s story of success, and look at statistics that provide a broad view of how business travel programs work for companies at large. Below are recent statistics from the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) that point to the success of business travel programs.

  • Providing non-cash rewards creates revenue increases three times higher than average.
  • Companies with the best customer retention and sales growth offer travel as a reward.
  • Travel rewards can increase sales by 18 percent and produce an ROI up to 112 percent.

These statistics are only averages, but they matter a great deal considering how many companies offer incentive travel trips to reward top business performance. The IRF study referenced above also states that nearly 50 percent of U.S. businesses use incentive travel as a performance reward, and that businesses in the U.S. spend $22.5 billion a year on incentive travel trips.

Creating the Best Business Travel Trips

As positive as the statistics above may seem, they are underpinned by something that is essential for experiencing the success they quantify: Planning trips that are highly rewarding from beginning to end. These types of trips are typically facilitated by a company that specializes in planning and executing incentive based trips, such as Incentive Travel Solutions. With us working as your trusted travel planner, you receive the following benefits, among others.

  • Trip planned within travel budget
  • Travel to a unique destination
  • Pre-arranged travel and lodging
  • Travel itinerary of exciting activities
  • Travel staff that help manage the trip

The IRF study also found that incentive travel budgets per person now average as much as $3,440 person. That is a significant amount of money to invest in a trip that doesn’t achieve its intended effect of motivating top business performance in the coming year. That’s why we recommend that you contact us before plans for your next incentive travel trip are finalized.

Contact Incentive Travel Solutions

At Incentive Travel Solutions, we specialize in helping companies make the most of their business travel programs. To kick off the travel planning process, please call us today at (704) 540-1482, or use our contact form, to schedule a free consultation. We look forward to helping your company plan a trip that is unforgettable for all the right reasons and motivates your workforce to qualify for the next unforgettable trip at year’s end. Start planning today!

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Four Simple Strategies for Keeping Top Talent at Your Company

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invest-in-your-peopleEvery company wants its work positions to be staffed with the best talent in the field, but motivating top talent to accept a job offer is only half the battle. Once top performers are on the payroll, you have to find a way to keep them there. There are several ways to do this, but four strategies stand out for their time-tested effectiveness at accomplishing the task. Below, we take a look at these four strategies in terms of their usefulness for keeping top talent employed.

  1. Hire Talent in the Proper Work Capacity

If you hire a top performing online marketing specialist as the webmaster for your company’s web pages, he or she might be able to do the job with closed eyes, but therein lies the problem. Instead of desiring “cake jobs”, top performers tend to like challenges in the workplace that let them exhibit their skills and add to them as they go. Lack of job satisfaction among top performers is one of the main reasons why companies fail at keeping top talent employed.

  1. Let Talent Lead When Appropriate

Top talent is identified as such for a reason: Top performing employees are often self-starters who proactively look for ways to increase their performance. Consequently, they often have insightful ideas about improving the execution of business processes, implementing cost saving measures, and more. You may be the boss, but letting your top performers help shape the way your company does business is a great way for keeping top talent where you want it: in-house.

  1. Reward Talent in Memorable Ways

If an employee is already considered top talent when your company hires him or her, you know that the person is almost certainly accustomed to receiving generous bonuses and raises. The individual will expect to receive these rewards from your company, too. So, what can you do to put your organization in a unique light in the eyes of the new hire? One option is offering incentive travel trips to unique destinations that create memories that will never be forgotten.

  1. Encourage Good Work Relationships

When workers are under the gun to meet business goals and experience stress, encouraging good work relationships is easier said than done. Because of their high performance value, top talent often experiences this situation. Consequently, creating good relationships outside the workplace, and then bringing them back into it, is a good option. One way to do this is to send top performers on an incentive travel trip that helps them bond individually and as a team.

Need Solutions for Keeping Top Talent?
If your company is searching for effective ways to keep top talent in the fold, there are several options to choose from, one of which is offering incentive travel trips to top performers. In addition strengthening your employees’ dedication to your company out of gratitude, offering great trips also fosters the benefits of better teamwork and improved workplace morale. For help planning the most rewarding incentive travel trips, give us a call today at (704) 540-1482.

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How to Attract and Retain Top Talent: Six Strategies

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attract-talentHighly talented business people are similar to exceptionally talented athletes: They often bring the organization that they represent more revenue than it would earn if they weren’t on the payroll. Savvy companies know this and consistently focus on separating the grain from the chaff when it comes to hiring new workers. Once the best workers are hired, however, the focus changes from getting them inside company walls to keeping them there for as long as possible.

Attracting Top Talent

To attract and retain top talent is a single yet dual endeavor. Before a company can show talented employees how great it is to be a part of the organization, it must often draw their attention away from other job opportunities and motivate them to accept the job offer. There are several ways to do this, with the strategies below being three of the most effective ones.

  1. Company Mission

Workers who are considered top talent often earn the consideration as a result more than pure talent. They’re also placed at the top of the talent ladder because they are highly passionate about the work they perform. Consequently, presenting them with a company mission statement that synchronizes with what they hope to accomplish through their job can be quite attractive.

  1. Salary / Benefits

After they’ve been in the workforce for a few years, most top talent job candidates are quite accustomed to receiving salary offers and benefits packages that rank at the top of national averages in terms of financial value. If your company hopes to compete with other companies that are trying to land top talent, it should plan on offering an elite salary / benefits package.

  1. Career Trajectory

Some top talent job candidates won’t hold a position long-term unless their employer offers them a career trajectory that paves the way to elite positions. After all, these types of positions are where their talent would naturally take them. When pitching an offer to a top talent worker for a specific job, be sure to mention other, more advanced positions for which they can qualify.

Retaining Top Talent

Many companies consider retaining top talent to be the hardest part of the how to attract and retain top talent equation. This is because highly talented workers have a reputation for moving from position to position until they finally discover the perfect work opportunity. Below are three time-tested strategies that companies can use to provide this type of employment opportunity.

  1. Performance Bonuses

For workers who have the talent to control their financial destiny at a company, performance bonuses are better motivators than flat bonuses, as they allow workers to truly earn more money from working extra hard. Flat bonuses help control expenses, but performance bonuses can offer something better: A sustained revenue boost from top workers performing their best.

  1. Incentive Travel Trips

Like performance bonuses, incentive travel trips reward workers for working diligently, but instead of offering a bonus check, the trips pay workers’ way to exciting destinations, where they experience elite lodging, dining and leisure activities. All the while, the trips help employees form closer relationships that increase their dedication to the company’s team environment.

  1. Hiring Other Top Talent

Because the financial rewards employees receive for top performance are tied to the financial performance of their employer, one of the best ways to keep top talent employed is to surround it with other top talent. This strategy also helps prevent top workers from feeling as if they need to carry their department on their back to achieve success — a situation that increases stress.

Interested in Incentive Travel Trips?
If your company is searching for effective strategies for retaining top talent, offering incentive travel trips should be at the top of the list. To help companies attract and retain top talent, Incentive Travel Solutions plans and executes elite incentive travel trips, handling all of the trip details so you and your best employees can simply relax and enjoy the special occasion.

To start the trip planning process, contact one of our travel specialists today by calling (704) 540-1482. We will help your company plan trips that its top performers will never forget!