As well as meeting the company's objectives, travel as a reward also owes much of its effectiveness to the fact that it has the potential to respond to some of the individual employee's own intrinsic needs. For example, unlike many other rewards, a travel prize has a considerable amount of trophy value attached to it. Social status is increased, not only because the winner is recognised as a top salesperson, but also because he or she may be one of the few who have experienced the unique award, such as staying in a medieval castle in Scotland or visiting a particular foreign country. It has been argued by the supporters of incentive travel that any reward giving this type of recognition to its recipient provides a long-lasting, positive reinforcement, an element that adds to its motivational value.
For example, it has been suggested by Ricci and Holland (1992) that, foe the individual, an incentive trip has the potential to harness each of the four categories of travel motivation described by Mclntosh (1984):
• physical motivation (rest, health, sport, etc.)
• cultural motivation (the desire to experience other cultures)
• interpersonal motivations (to meet and visit people]
• status and prestige motivators.
It is clearly upon the fourth category of travel motivators that incentive travel builds most strongly. The enhanced attention and status accorded to award winners fulfils a basic need for recognition and acceptance.
Another advantage for the award winners, it is often claimed, is greater acceptance by their partners and other family members of the additional time and effort that must be worked in order to achieve the award. When family members also go along on the trips, there can be greater tolerance for the long hours needed to achieve a reward. This point will be developed further in the later section on the organising of incentive programmes.
With so many benefits arising from its use, the effectiveness of incentive travel as a motivator is not in doubt. However, commentators differ on the question of whether travel is always the most powerful motivational tool available to employers. While some (e.g. Wilt et at., 1992; Hastings el al., 1988) have concluded that travel-based incentives are more effective at motivating employees than other forms of reward, others are much less convinced that this can be demonstrated unambiguously in quantitative terms.
Buyers
It is important to distinguish here between those who pay for the trips, the companies, and those who go on incentive trips, i.e. the award winners who are the end consumers.
Looking at buyers in terms of industry sectors, there is little change from year to year in who constitute the biggest spenders on this form of business tourism. In general, the major buyers of incentive programmes remain as they always have been: the automotive, financial services, pharmaceutical, office equipment, electronics and consumer durables sectors (The European, 1995). The fact that these industries all operate in extremely competitive sectors, where maintaining or increasing market share demands constant exhortations to greater efforts on the part of the salesforce and management, makes these types of business the natural consumers of the vast majority of incentive trips.
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The trade magazine, Conference & Incentive Travel, carries out regular surveys in which UK-based incentive travel agencies are asked to name the industry sectors that provide them with the most business. The results of one such survey are shown in Figure 4.1. In terms of end consumers, an earlier survey found that sales staff and dealers account for 80% of business for the agencies, confirming the overwhelming use of this type of award with those selling their companies' products and services (Twite, 1999).
Considering the main buyers in national terms, it is the country that first used travel to motivate employees that still consumes the most incentive travel products. The origins of incentive travel as a modern motivation tool are attributed to the US company National Cash Registers of Dayton, Ohio (now part of AT&T). In 1906, the company awarded 70 salespeople diamond-studded pins and a free trip to company headquarters. In 1911, the winners got a free trip to New York. (Ricci and Holland, 1992). It is back to those humble trips that today's multimillion-dollar incentive travel industry may trace its genesis.
Today, the US incentive travel market remains the largest in the world, and it is still recognised widely that the major trends and developments affecting incentive travel tend to originate in the USA and then spread to other countries.
Europe is the next largest user of incentive travel, although this motivational tool did not cross the Atlantic until the 1970s, being used first in the UK and then about ten years later in continental Europe. Most of the European incentive travel market is still generated by the UK, followed by France, Germany and Italy. Nevertheless, the Scandinavian countries, Austria, Belgium and Spain are all fast developing as outbound incentive travel generators.
However, even between individual European countries, there are a number of interesting differences in the ways in which incentive travel is used. O'Brien (1997b| points out two of these. First, whereas the French, Italian and German incentive travel industries have always capitalised on their own domestic destinations, the UK domestic market is relatively small because many UK companies do not regard the home market a-s ah. appropriate destination for their major incentive programmes..
Second, in the case of the Scandinavian countries, O'Brien notes that the elitism implied by incentive travel goes against the work ethos, particularly in Sweden. Consequently, when travel is offered as an incentive, the award tends to be offered to practically everybody in the company and resembles more a company outing rather than an incentive trip.
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Intermediaries
In this section, the question of who organises incentive travel programmes and hat \ they do so for maximum effect will be explored. This sector of business travel, pet-haps more than any other, is one where the use of intermediaries is widespread. Whereas there are members of staff in most companies who would have a go at arranging a seminar or conference if need be, there are far fewer who would dare to venture unaided into the organising of an incentive programme.
O'Brien (1997b) has estimated that, in Europe, only one in five companies handles all incentive travel arrangements in-house, most opting to have their incentive programmes organised using the services of an external agency.
A range of external agencies providing five different levels of incentive-related services was identified by Ricci and Holland (1992). The range serves to illustrate| the various elements that constitute the planning and management of an incentive travel programme:
•Full-service incentive marketing companies, which handle promotional materials, administration, travel and merchandise fulfillment.
• Hull-service incentive houses, which are similar to incentive marketing companies but specialise in incentive travel rather than merchandise rewards.
• Incentive travel fulfillment houses, which primarily arrange incentive travel trips with some incentive promotion services.
• Travel agents with an incentive division where the agency specialises in providing incentive travel programmes but offers no marketing services.
• Retail travel agencies, which offer typical travel arrangement services and can assist with incentive trips.
Intermediaries offering the more complete range of incentive-related services often reflect this in the names by which they are known: incentive travel agencies, incentive travel companies or incentive travel houses. To these may be added more recent arrivals on the scene: performance improvement companies, such as Maritz, Inc., who propose a range of rewards, including travel, to motivate their clients' workforces.
Agencies active in this field vary from one-person businesses to vast multinational conglomerates for whom incentive travel is only part of their business. An example of the latter is the UK-based events management agency, TMO, with an incentive travel turnover of over £25 million in 2001, out of a total turnover of almost £33 million (Creevy, 2002). However, only a small minority of incentive travel intermediaries have an annual incentive travel turnover on this scale. The vast majority are small and medium-sized agencies doing much smaller volumes of business. According to research undertaken by Conference & Incentive Travel magazine, half of the top 25 agencies in the UK in 2001 had fewer than 50 members of staff (ibid).
Nevertheless, an earlier survey's author quotes the divisional managing director of another major player in this sector, Maritz Travel, who believes that the future will see increasing consolidation among incentive travel agencies, with a few large agencies corning to dominate the market. He also sees increasing demand for services from full-service agencies who can offer clients a comprehensive package providing everything necessary to take their incentive programmes through from beginning to end (Twite, 1999).
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