Exploring the World of Incentive Travel

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Transcript

Christine (Broadsword): Hello and welcome to our podcast series created by us here at Broadsword called B. Listening. Today we are talking to a very lovely person sharing about the value of global incentive travel that events professionals just need to have on their radar. Welcome to the podcast, The Incentive Traveller, AKA Olivia Salvage. 

Olivia: Thank you, Christine. 

Christine: Can you tell us more about yourself and how you got into what you're doing today?

Olivia: Yeah, so... I always kind of go right back to the beginning, but when I was 16, I started some work experience with a wedding coordinator and that kind of ignited my passion for the events industry. After about two years, I kind of realised weddings were not the one for me. So I took it upon myself to go to uni where I went to Sheffield Hallam and studied event management. And really from there... It was like such a great opportunity. Like tutors were amazing. They put us forward for so many options. We got experience with agencies, venues. So yeah, from that, I kind of, haven't done anything else since and it's been a long time now. 

Christine: For those who are listening and don't really know about fan trips and incentives, could you give us a little introduction into this part of the events industry?

Olivia: Yeah, I am definitely biased, but I think it's the best part of the industry that we have, especially incentive travel. That's a kind of a niche that I've been really interested in on so many levels. 

Incentive itself is a pretty broad term. So we can have it in marketing organisations when we might talk about either one of those offers that might say sign up today and get a 30 day free trial or a free gift card. It's kind of, on a broad scope of things, a reward to incentivise a behaviour or an action. So when we get into the workplace, that's where we kind of talk about incentivising a behaviour in line with a company goal or a target to essentially try to get a better performance out of people. 

And then it can kind of be either in a financial reward and there's a big debate -  it used to be the saying 'cash is king' - but obviously we work in incentive travel and I've done a lot of research and did my dissertation on kind of cash versus non-cash rewards. And it was kind of pretty obvious that non-cash incentives were the way to go. Aside from those financial bonuses, we get those like once in a lifetime trips and money-can't-buy experiences. And that's kind of where incentives enter the events industry and where planners come in. 

And as a trip, I would say they really do go above and beyond. It's really about giving someone an experience that their salary couldn't afford or that their time couldn't afford. So intertwining those luxury experiences, kind of five -star hospitality with thoughtful gifts, private experiences. So yeah, I could talk about them for ages. 

Industry wise, typically they work really well for sales-based businesses and kind of a lot of my experience comes from the direct selling network marketing businesses where they are hugely popular, but equally they can be used in any organisation. So from C-Suite executives down to kind of junior staff members, again, just to incentivise that performance. So yeah, that's kind of incentives. 

Fam trips is the other one - short for familiarisation trips. This is really what I think is an incentive of working in events. We have some pretty hard work and long hours, but we do get the opportunity to go on these fam trips. So what they are is a chance for either a destination or a venue or a supplier to kind of show us what their product is and what they'll pay for your presence on the trip and your participation in the hope that you will then take that experience back to your clients. It's really a chance for you to understand a product so you can better sell it to clients. And again, these can be hosted by a number of different people. A lot of them come from DMCs. So your destination management companies or DMOs, which are your destination marketing organisations. (We have so many acronyms in our business!). And, only now that I've started working for a DMO, do I really understand the marketing side of it and kind of the distinction is your DMO is trying to get people into the destinations as a whole. And that's like selling the dream whereas your DMC is more logistics and they're kind of making that dream a reality for your clients. So hopefully that clarifies but yeah, either way, the fam trips are an amazing chance for you to just immerse yourself in an experience and not have to worry about working at the same time! 

Christine: What are some of the best incentive experiences you've had in your career? Any favourite destinations?

Olivia: It's such a hard question because we're so lucky in that you do get to have these amazing experiences. One of my favourite ones that sticks out was an Invoyage trip. So Invoyage kind of do industry events for the people that don't know, and they do them so, so well. So again, it's like a fam trip whilst networking and meeting other suppliers and venues but they're such good guys and they do it to such a high standard. 

And this one trip was to Lucerne in Switzerland. It was so beautiful and I'm a proper mountain girl. So the destination itself was gorgeous  but also the experience from start to finish. I think that's what really makes an incentive super memorable is that every touch point was thought about - the hotel was a five star resort and it sits atop of a mountain overlooking Lake Lucerne and it's this gorgeous design hotel. The food was immaculate, of course there was so much food and drink, but then the experience we did was electric snowmobiling. So it was so good! And it kind of is nice that values alignment piece being able to have the luxury but also being sustainable in the same breath, which is really important to me. So that was a big win.  And then after that, like they took us to this terrace and they had red wine and reclare and a Swiss, I can't remember what the horn was, the Swiss horn playing and yeah, just all around that was a beautiful experience. 

But yeah, I think destination wise, I should probably say my destination that I work for now, which is beautiful.  But I would have to go the other way. And have you been to the Azores? 

Christine: I have not. 

Olivia: OK, this I feel like it's 50 -50. Some people are knowing about it now and some people still don't know. And it's it's an absolute treasure. So it's off the coast of Portugal. Not even an hour's flight, I don't think. But I went there on a solo holiday like a long, time ago. And it's like Jurassic Park in some aspects. Like it's these huge rolling hills and deep jungles. but then you've got like natural hot springs in the ocean. Yeah, and the community of the island was just so, good. And I actually, I fell in love with it. So I pitched it as an incentive for a company I was working for at the time. And we managed to take a group of 70 there for an incentive. And I think not only because of the experience that I had on the island, but then being able to take other people there, you know, like we were swimming with dolphins in the day, which was totally wild. They just take you out on Zodiac boats and you kind of hunt for the pods and then they just push you in the water! So like no SeaWorld involved, of course, but the animals are so inquisitive anyway, so they're naturally like coming up to you. I just loved that experience.

And again, I feel like I'm rambling about this one, but we had a WhatsApp group for the trip. So we were chatting and then once the trip was over, a few people stayed on and extended and it was a trip where you could bring your family and guests. So I think just seeing other people making like family memories and sharing what they were up to afterwards, it was really just quite a touching moment where you're like, I'm so glad that I could have facilitated this. And I think that's the joy of like incentive travel is that you're having these really close moments with kind of strangers, but you all leave like having a new relationship afterwards. So yeah, that destination just wins for me. 

Christine; You seem quite passionate about sustainability as well. Are there some tips you could offer for lower impact traveling or planning a responsible incentive? 

Olivia: Yes, so so many. I find it hard when we're traveling for incentives, you know, there was one time when I was taking like eight flights in a month. You always see the airport so busy, and  yet the more you get stuck into it and saw kind of food leftover. Yeah, big area of passion for me. So something that I think is interestingly coming out of the sustainable industry is moving away from the term sustainable, because I'm moving towards kind of being more regenerative. I think it's got to the point where people are realising if we're just trying to sustain what we're doing, it's not really having the impact that the planet needs. So we need to go that step further and being regenerative in our actions and, you know, leaving somewhere. better than when you found it as opposed to just maintaining what's actually a pretty bad situation in a lot of instances. 

So I guess from like starting right from the very beginning and having that mindset shift in like every point of your design, how are we being regenerative? So when we start with destinations and venues, I really like the GDS index. global destination sustainability index. And what they do is rank cities and countries based on how they're aligned with the UN sustainable development goals. So you can already start from like the top 100 and go, okay, our destination has to be in this top 100. And then you could go further in that and say, we have to have venues that are, I think, LEED certified is one of the big ones, or, you know, maybe they're off grid, or just looking at the initiatives that they're doing. That obviously takes a lot of Like that's kind of a triple effect. Like you tick that box at the beginning and then a lot of stuff will naturally follow, I think. 

And then going onto excursions, obviously one of the beautiful points of incentives, getting people out and experiencing an area - it's shifting that mindset again. if you're going to be taking them on a scuba diving trip, perhaps to see coral reefs, changing that round and actually try to find an organiser can do regeneration of the reef. So you're planting corals rather than just seeing them. Then people feel more rewarded having that as an experience, as well as instead of just seeing these beautiful things, you can say actually I've helped to protect them. again, maybe it's biased, but I just think that's more, it's a more valuable experience, more memorable. 

Same with looking into any kind of charities in the area. Like how can you align with the community? And, you know, instead of typically expensive gifts that makeup incentives, can you replace some of that is with donations to the organisations and like do you have a gift that aligns with that? Honestly, I could talk so long about all the different things, but I think if you start with the destination, the venue and looking at the community and how you can support that, that's a lot of wins. 

When it comes to,  I guess, the actual travel, like we've got our hands tied. We are just waiting, I guess, on the sidelines for airlines to change, like to either develop new technology. I think we can all do our bit in terms of lobbying and campaigning as incentive agencies. Like you can certainly be trying to speak to people and get like demand equal supply. So if we're putting more pressure on kind of airline partners to change. then that helps, but otherwise, I guess train travel is a big one that's been making a bit of a comeback. And I think that's a really beautiful transition where you're kind of using the journey as the experience rather than the destination. Europe, we've got so many nice options. There's the British Bellman, the Pullman train, which is like such a nice, very elegant, classical luxury. and you can have private carriages there for groups. So if you just want to keep it in the UK, if you've got a UK based client, or again, Switzerland, you'll kind of see a theme - I love mountains! They've got the Glacier Express, which I love and in Canada, here, we've also got the Rocky Mountaineer. So like loads of ways where you can kind of, if you've got clients where they've got people based in other countries, instead of flying them somewhere, which is obviously the most unsustainable way of traveling - can you look at a local train journey where you make that the experience and have looks carriages and like nice banquets?  So yeah, I'm gonna cut my sustainable talk there! 

But maybe one more thing! I guess the frequency of travel and I think this is where kind of the DMC comes back in again as an agency. But looking at the frequency of how often we're doing site visits abroad. Do we need to do three site visits once you've confirmed the venue or can you just really try and pack that first site visit, maybe stay longer and see as many venues and potential options as possible and then get the client on board to say, well from here on out, our DMC is going to be doing any recce visits, can video call us and we can chat through logistics or they can just take videos. But yeah, I think kind of prioritising that first visit and trying to reduce the travel after that - because even those one night stays at hotels are so bad on a bottom line in terms of like emissions and then print. So yeah, trying to take that away. 

Christine: We've touched a little bit on the psychological theory behind incentives. Why do you think corporate incentives are such a powerful investment for businesses? 

Olivia: I love, yeah, I love this topic. so I, again, I'm super passionate about this. think that the psychology side of events It's getting better that there are a few people that have really loud voices about it. And it's, we're working in like a people-centric industry where we're trying to design an experience to evoke a behaviour or an emotion. So the psychology is so important. And psychologically speaking as a species, we are predominantly creatures of habit. And most of our decisions are made based on unconscious biases and gut feeling. So we're actually not very rational in our considerations as much as we believe that we're autonomous, there's so much going on kind of in our unconscious consciousness that's driving what we do. And I think this is where incentives are really valuable for corporations because it's kind of a guaranteed result. 

You're playing on deep rooted human behaviours. And there's a psychologist called Maslow - I think we've all seen his hierarchy of needs. So it's kind of you want to be, you're motivated to work so that you can put food on the table or a roof over your heads. You're motivated to socialise, to like build friendships or find love. And you're motivated to achieve for self-esteem and prestige. And it's those kind of two top tiers of that prestige and achievement that incentives play to. And we're kind of manipulating those by offering a reward for them. And I think that is what businesses see the value in. I work, again, I mentioned a lot of my experiences come from network marketing and direct selling and you can actually see it take hold really well there. You know, for the incentive, they're given say nine months to achieve sales targets and you see people work really hard and you see the financial data back it up. Like you see sales targets are reached, the business does really well. 

But then you see the social side of it. So you see the sellers who are super now vocal on social media about that they've achieved this award. They're part of this kind of elite prestige crew that are able to go on this Grecian cruise. And then on the flip side, you see the people who didn't quite achieve it that time round. And they're just so desperate to be a part of that community like that club. And that's the kind of emotions that are at play in that regardless of the corporate targets, the individuals probably not thinking hugely about those. They're thinking about their personal gain. But as a business, if you can tie your corporate goals and financial targets to this human emotion, then it's kind of an easy win for them. So yeah, that's what I think it's so valuable for.

Christine: What would you recommend as an attendee experience or workshop that focuses on employee wellbeing and team building? 

Olivia: Okay, again, this comes back to my bias because I'm a super outdoorsy individual. I'm just a huge advocate for it. And there were some really interesting statistics - I was researching this for another part of work actually so it fits really well that you've asked this question! But the outdoor recreation industry has had a crazy growth. Since 2018, I think it's between 6 and 7% growth that this outdoor recreation industry has seen. Obviously a lot of that is down to COVID - people kind of discovered the outdoors again and there's been a massive boost in line with wellbeing. So I think people have realised how much better they feel when they've been active or been outside. Taking that back to an experience or an activity, I think it could be as simple as like a group led hike or bicycle ride, an e -bike ride, which is kind of a lot of fun when people haven't done e-bikes before we can go a lot harder terrain but splitting that into different activity levels. Or there's a really wicked experience outside of London called Nomadic Dinners - in the day, you can kind of forage for, you know, herbs, mushrooms, like wild vegetation, and then you have this gorgeous, elegant dinner in the forest afterwards. 

Yeah, I think there's so many ways to integrate the outdoors into a wellness activity in a programme. And even we've got some venues here that are offering forest bathing now. So they'll take a group out just meditate in the forest. But then at the end of it, they'll provide a picnic that's like already set up. So you carry on your walk and then you've got like a really luxe picnic at the end of it. So I just think that ticks my boxes, so nice - isn't it just?

Weather is obviously a big point of contention, not just in the UK where you cannot guarantee a day of sunshine in July, but like bringing it back to climate change, weather is unpredictable all around at the moment. But you get this when the rain falls, you know, get that smell from the soil and I think what it's called  petricle or petricle, I'm probably saying it wrong. But actually when the water reacts with the nutrients in the soil and the oils from the plants, scientists have actually found that the smell boosts serotonin in the brain. So now, I am a firm believer that the right gear is the only problem. As long as you've got raincoats and you can provide wellies for the group, like get outdoors, whatever the weather, because for wellness, like even when it's raining, it's obviously helping. Yeah, that's my outdoor wellness activity suggestion. 

Christine: In the context of the current cost of living crisis, how do you see the incentive sector growing? 

Olivia: It's obviously a really hard time for a lot of people at the moment and not just individuals and employees, but also businesses. We're seeing a lot of layoffs across the board from Tesla, like down to your experiential agencies. But I think this is going to be a time for incentives as long as agencies and planners are equipped with kind of the right data to lead with when they're talking to clients. 

ROI is going to be a big thing. 

So whilst these employers are struggling with bottom lines and profits, spending, you know, 100 grand on an incentive may not be their first preferred route. If you can demonstrate that, you know, from previous incentives, you've seen that like a hundred grand spend actually has equated to a 500 grand kind of business boost in terms of sales, then that's like easy, a fivefold ROI right there. So I think if we haven't been measuring, then we should definitely start measuring. Events are super hard to quantify in that way, but if you can work with the client to get their results in the backend, then that's a great, great sell because I think that's obviously helping satisfy the business side of things. And then on the employee opinion, we've got, you know, someone who their kind of disposable income is lessened when all of the basic costs of goods have gone up. So if, you know, you're offering them that incentive and saying just for this little bit of harder work, you can have an all expenses paid vacation and perhaps there's an additional buy in fee your partner or also kids, that is a really attractive kind of option to just put in a bit of extra legwork for a couple of months and, you know, have this gorgeous experience. 

And in the same breath, I think we're going to see incentives kind of grow perhaps in the smaller groups. So the more VIP incentive groups, but equally ones that can allow you to bring families or partners. And this is something It's been pretty common in the network marketing direct selling area. And maybe that's going to evolve into other industries a bit more over the next coming years. But I definitely think it's going to be a good thing for the incentive industry, the cost of living, because as long as we can really demonstrate to clients like the return on investment that you're going to get and that it is valuable and taking it back to that kind of cash versus experience argument. 

You can bring back the psychology and pretty easily like we're a social species and if we're struggling to kind of afford those disposable activities, they'd be the first things to be cut. I think in the choice of having extra money for your groceries versus, you know, a week long holiday, the knock on effects like you'll remember that vacation for so long. So I'm I always think that one's gonna win.

Christine:  Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and sharing your expertise and thoughts with us. 

Olivia: Yeah, thank you so much for having me all the way from the UK. 

Christine: If you'd like to see similar content to this, you can follow us on our socials or visit our website at weareabroadsword.com. Thank you for listening and hope to see you on the next one!