What is Incentive Travel?

• Incentive travel is an important subset of the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (MICE) industry. It is effectively a travel perk used to incentivize or motivate employees or partners. It is often tied to company goals or top performers. In this report from the University of Central Florida Rosen College of Hospitality Management, Goldblatt and Nelson define an incentive event as “a corporate sponsored meeting or trip to reward effort and create company loyalty, often built around a theme; and a celebratory event intended to showcase persons who meet or exceed sales or production goals.”

However you define it, employee rewards are changing—gone are the days when holiday bonuses were enough to provide year-round motivation. Now, it’s all about non-monetary incentives, and the predictions for 2020 by the Incentive Revenue Foundation (IRF) support that idea.

How do incentive travel programs work?

• For decades, high-performing organizations have used incentive travel as an effective management strategy, but the program is largely misunderstood because there is so much diversity in how it is implemented. Although there is not a single standard for how incentive travel programs work, the basic structure involves employees meeting a pre-defined goal to qualify for a group trip. These incentive travel perks for top-tier employees can range from annual team-building retreats at a mountain resort to exotic European cruises to fully paid family vacations at upscale beach clubs.