Earlier this year, Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE) CEO Kevin Hinton gave a webinar based on the results of one of their recent indexes. The objective was to find out how many organizations were tracking the actual results of their incentive travel data – in essence, who was crunching the numbers and who was just trusting their instincts when it came to the “success” of incentive travel.
As we all are aware, analytics in the incentive world are more in demand than ever before. The problem is, the actual ROI for companies isn’t always that easy to quantify. The results of the aforementioned index are outlined in Allison Hall’s article on MeetingsNet: Still Taking it on Faith that Incentive Travel Works? Industry Needs a Come-to-Data Moment
Incentive travel experts all believe deeply in what they do and assert that there is real value in incentive travel, citing these eight things as especially important:
- Increase profit
- Increase individual productivity
- Improve employee engagement and morale
- Strengthen employee commitment to the organization
- Build better relationships between employees and management
- Retain employees
- Build better relationships among employees
- Enhance ability to recruit new employees
Hall points out that, “In today’s world, with its demand for transparency and data, the voice of experience is no longer enough.” We must work together as an industry to deliver more measurable return on investment to our clients.
Our conclusion is this: Incentive travel is definitely worth it for a number of reasons that might not exactly be measurable. That being said, it’s important to at least attempt to quantitatively measure the success of incentive travel programs. In the end, that’s what will ultimately prove that incentive travel programs are a very solid investment and an important part of a company’s growth strategy. To do an ROI analysis, companies will need to be able to provide the necessary data – past, present, and future (projections). And, keep in mind, an ROI analysis is only as good as the data that goes into it.
Let’s end on this note offered by Hinton:
“What we are seeing, which is encouraging, is an increasing connection between a company’s brand and its incentive travel program. How can a company increase brand loyalty from employees, customers, and channel partners? Their incentive travel program can help to drive that behavior.”
For more about SITE, visit the organization’s website.
