The Lure of Travel

While travel as a reward for great sales has been a standard in the incentive mix for decades and maybe longer, this tried-and-true standby has undergone some sprucing up recently. These days, a reward trip can mean just about anything, anywhere. Managers who want to put some real oomph in their incentive travel plan are changing itineraries to meet the changing appetites of a hipper selling professional.

One shift – toward flexible travel certificates – offers travel anywhere in the world at the convenience of the winner. Flexible travel also keeps some top salespeople at work while others are off reaping their rewards.

Companies can also custom-fit the salesperson – a good idea for motivating everyone on the force rather than singling out only top performers for that once-a-year trip to Nirvanaland. And let’s not forget about rewarding the sales support staff so critical to overall sales success. A weekend getaway close to home may not be the grand slam of touring Europe’s major capitals, but it says thank you in a personal way and cements relationships between sales and service.

Group trips offer the powerful advantage of getting far-flung reps and managers together once in a while. Imagination and careful planning can make group travel an exciting and educational incentive.

David Riddell, vice president of certificate marketing for Marriott Hotels & Resorts, makes the basic case for giving your best reps a memorable vacation. “Nothing works like travel as an incentive,” he argues. “We think companies should use cash sparingly because it can be confused with compensation and it has no trophy value. Travel leaves your people with photos and memories.”

Sales managers usually work through an incentive company when selecting Marriott resorts for long-term incentive programs. “The incentive specialists know motivation and how to put together a program,” Riddell says. “The do-it-yourselfers find it is really easy to make mistakes on travel.”

A typical incentive program for a sales group might be spaced out over 12 months. “The purpose is to get salespeople excited over the long term. You have to put about $2,000-$2,500 per award winner in your budget,” Riddell estimates. “The top performers get resort vacations in places like Desert Springs, Bermuda, Sydney, Hong Kong or Paris.”

Group getaways
Group travel brings side benefits as well, according to Riddell. “You can get your top people and your distributors together at one time. The top brass can rub shoulders with the top performers.”

Sometimes, however, managers have such short-term objectives as getting sales up fast over the next 30 to 90 days. Travel is the obvious alternative to cash incentives for this type of short-term motivation.

In this case managers often come to Marriott directly, for travel incentives that are easy to administer. Marriott provides certificates for stays at its hotels or resorts all over the world. “The beauty is the flexibility,” Riddell emphasizes. “They can go when they want, where they want, with whoever they want to take.” The Marriott certificates range from one to seven nights and cover room, full breakfast and all applicable taxes.

If there is a room available at a Marriott resort, your sales winner will get it. Marriott does not withhold rooms for its best customers when a certificate-holder seeks lodging.

The flexible Marriott certificates have several other virtues, according to Riddell. “Executives understand that their people want to do something on their own. For your top performers, you may want to get these folks away and make them go on vacation, or they will burn out.”

Another nice thing about individual certificates is that you can tailor them for the nonsales employees who support the sales force. “It’s a special treat for people who don’t travel much,” Riddell argues. “You could give a certificate to an assistant as thanks for staying up all night to do that report: ‘Hey, you can get completely away from here for two nights.'” Marriott’s certificates can include golf, skiing or dinner along with the hotel stays. For individual travel incentives, flexibility remains the key. “Gen-X does not have a lot of company loyalty. We find they like to do things the way they want and on their own.”

Bob Ryan of Travel Round agrees. “We have seen a steady trend over the last five years toward more individual travel rewards – away from everybody going as group,” he says. The reasons are familiar. “More and more spouses are working at separate jobs, there are greater demands from the children, and their scheduling is crazy now.”Flexible travel incentives are best for crazy schedules. “Allowing them to choose where, when and with whom makes the award a lot more popular with the recipient,” Ryan argues.

Travel Round gives its incentive recipients 10 destinations to choose from and a year to travel. “And there are no restrictions on timing,” Ryan says. He warns inexperienced managers to watch out for restricted travel awards. “Flim-flams happen all the time.”Another clear trend Bob Ryan sees is improving appetites for deluxe accommodation. “Whether it is for weekend getaways or dream vacations of 7-10 days, people are looking more upscale. They want four- or five-star accommodations.” Deluxe vacations can cost from $500 for a weekend for two without airfare to $5,000 for a week at a dream resort with airfare.

Travel Round works with the 100 destinations most requested by award winners. Ryan puts these spots into 10 price classifications based on incentive budgets to come up with his flexible award program.

Ryan has one important tip for managers thinking of travel incentives. “In travel, more than in anything I can think of, you get what you pay for. It is hard to compare two different vacations. There are so many factors like season, location and type of room. What’s the difference between going to Hawaii in January versus August?” Well, let’s see, there’s the temperature, for one thing. And oh yes, fresh pineapples, giant surf, sandy beaches, surf boards, golf, hula skirts…

Spread the rewards
If you like the flexibility of certificates and want to deal directly with a travel company, Spirit Travel of Ft. Lauderdale may be the best place to go. Spirit specializes in certificates both as sales incentives and for consumer promotions. Its high volumes and 600 different certificate types allow Spirit to offer very affordable vacations that excite the sales force.

“Certificates are all we do,” emphasizes Spirit’s Al Castellanos. “Say you want to reward a large sales force. You can book 400 trips through a travel office or agent, or you can call us and say, ‘give me 400 Royal Caribbean cruises.’ It’s a lot simpler with us.”So simple, Spirit arranged 5,000 vacation certificates in four hours for one client, a cellular telephone company in the Dominican Republic – in Spanish, of course.

But Spirit certificates generally cover accommodations only. Castellanos thus sells trips mostly to resorts near the rep’s home base. This allows Spirit to offer a wide variety of vacations at the moderate cost suitable for rewarding many salespeople, not just the top performers. For example, a couple can get three days and two nights at a Holiday Inn or Radisson, with more than 200 locations around the U.S., for just $140. A four-day cruise out of Miami for two costs just $625, excluding transportation to the embarkation point.Castellanos sees advantages in spreading modest pleasures around evenly. “This way, you don’t have to reward just the top 10 percent and leave the other 90 percent of your reps upset,” he argues. “You can motivate lots of people to sell a slow-moving product, to sell more revenue, to introduce new products or to sell high-margin products.”

Do flexible certificates work? “We’re seeing more Fortune 500 companies think that certificates work,” Castellanos notes. “Companies like Cellular One and Bell South are coming around to our certificate approach.”

Another reason for the popularity of certificates among giant firms is the extraordinary variety of their sales forces. “One of the things we are seeing is the growth of multinational travel incentives,” says Jeffrey Broudy, executive vice president of United Incentives. “There are no boundaries anymore. North American corporations have subsidiaries and joint ventures throughout the world and must integrate them into their reward programs.”

That has changed the whole art of communicating incentives to the sales force. “Europe has five to eight major languages,” Broudy notes. “We now have to motivate without words, using pictures, graphics and videos.”

Global markets change the travel incentive itself. “Europeans are far more adventuresome; they want to see everything when they travel,” Broudy says. “They are used to traveling in many places and find it much easier to immerse themselves in different cultures.”

Maybe the American sales force is beginning to copy the Europeans. “We used to think of the U.S. as homogeneous,” Broudy says. “Actually, it never was. Now, with dual earners and single heads of households and the whole compression of leisure time, we have to think of different solutions. It can’t be one size fits all.”

United has thus moved toward “stored-value” incentive products, which can be applied to travel or other rewards. “We work with American Express and Persona Select,” Broudy says. “We can put the reward value on their debit cards. It may be used for travel, but maybe they will want other things as well.” The debit card approach lets incentive winners choose their prize. In Broudy’s words, “Let them pick their own dream and then work toward it.”

Free time and singing monks
“The attitude of Gen-X has changed, and we have to plan a lot differently than 10 years ago,” argues Ann Wold-Graham, senior vice president of EGR International. “The overwhelming majority of travelers want more free time. We tend to over-plan, while the younger generation wants to explore.”

Wold-Graham says built-in free time on group trips can also serve a “soft” corporate objective: giving sales colleagues time to get together and know each other informally.On both international and domestic trips, the EGR planner says travelers are seeking more adventure. “More people are moving to winter skiing trips, and they all want spas and exercise rooms at their hotels,” she notes. “Often, they are looking for things they cannot do at home. Two years ago, it would have been snorkeling. Now they want to make the Maui downhill bicycle run.”

Wold-Graham calls these trips, “adrenaline-extreme incentives.” Often, they are just right for the top sales personalities.

With careful planning, Wold-Graham believes, managers can make a group trip more than just a reward. “Trips abroad can be turned into exciting cultural exchanges.” With today’s global market, that could serve another “soft objective,” acquainting top salespeople with different countries.

“You can go on the Internet or listen to the BBC, but that won’t give you a sense of each country’s history,” she says. What will? “You have to plan the activities, do some research and use imagination.”

Wold-Graham did just that for a group incentive trip to Prague in the Czech Republic recently. “We hired 12 local actors to play monks in the ruins of an old chapel, singing Gregorian chants and talking about astrology. The group had a lot of fun, and they learned about a civilization. They are seeing it live, not just getting it off the Internet.” Imagination, not destination, is the key to a great group trip, the travel veteran believes. “I always tell my clients, if you are creative enough, you could do a great vacation in Jersey City. It just depends on what you put into it.”