A Travel Incentive Trips-for-Two Program is, Actually, Easier to Run than a Merchandise Program.
- Because number 1: Nothing, absolutely nothing to purchase to get started.
- Because number 2: No time wasted picking out the award, purchasing the award, stocking & shipping the award.
- Because number 3: No time wasted worrying whether or not the participants already own one.
- Because number 4: No contract to sign, no minimum to guarantee, no money up front.
- Because number 5: Nothing left over, nothing to return, no newer model replaced your prize, no competitor’s model made your prize obsolete.
The icing on the cake: When you finally have to pay, you pay from the incremental profit that is already in the bank, delivered by the winners who have already made their goal.
A Travel Incentive Trips-for-Two is not only easier but more welcome. We know, as we wrote on our website, “... there is almost no human emotion more powerful than Man’s need to ‘walk on the sands of a distant shore.’”
We are believers in the remarkable benefits of group travel incentives, however, group travel incentives are not easier to run than a merchandise program. Group travel incentives require up front monies, blocking of airline seats, the reserving of rooms, reserving sightseeing tours, and designing memorable daytime & nighttime events. Group travel incentives, however, are worth every speck of effort. The rewards they produce in increased excitement, increased sales, increased loyalty are legendary. No merchandise program has ever or can ever compare to a properly structured group travel incentive.
However we speak in this blog of the ease of designing a Travel Incentive Trips-for-Two program. Which is generally a one or two month - maximum three month - sprint contest designed to generate immediate response from the sales force or channel dealer-distributor family.
These programs are “shovel-ready.” All you need to do is 1. Set goals to achieve the objective 2. Announce the contest and 3. Promote the contest. Promoting the contest is the most difficult yet the most essential ingredient if the contest is to successfully achieve the objective.
A Travel Incentive is not an expense ... For those of you accustomed to writing reams of justification to get your incentive travel program into your companies fiscal forecast. Hear me out! I am telling you that any outlay of monies spent on a properly structured travel incentive will return more than the amount paid out in additional profits. Thus a profit generator (profit center).
Here comes the example to validate my assertion: A long, long time ago, when I was a lad, I worked as an Ad Director for a vacuum cleaner manufacturer. I firmly believed we could persuade our distributor’s to sell more vacs than they ever thought they were capable of selling if we could offer them a good enough reason. We finally decided to offer each of them a trip to Rome, Italy (with spouses) in return for a set number of vacumn cleaners purchased. Perfect choice because until the early sixties the only way to Rome from the USA was by cruise ship, or prop planes that stopped three times and took about 26 hours. This was the early 60’s so none of our distributors had ever been to Rome.
We had the prize, we could make the vacs. We needed just the money to run the trip! So I created this "P&L Pro Forma" (that’s what we called it), to convince our president that we had the money to run the trip. Because I knew that a travel incentive could generate its own budget – because it is a profit center!
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The year was 1964 (as I said, I was a young lad)
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We did about $20 million annual volume in 1964, each of those dollars is worth eight of today’s dollars. We were, in essence, a $160 million company in today’s dollars.
It was September 28, 1970. John Wilkinson, founder of the London DMC (called a “ground operator” in those days) Wilkintours, and I were sitting in the mezzanine of the Expositions Room in London’s Royal Festival Hall.
We were there because I had a seven back-to-back charter group coming to London in February 1971. The quote was tight and after intense negotiation with the hotel we were faced with what we euphemistically called a “serious budget shortfall.” We could not afford lunch in the hotel for Day 3, but ... after a truly diligent search, we found that we could rent the Expositions Room, cater the lunch and still be within budget. Problem solved, right?
Ha. The world should be so easy. Today was our first inspection of the Expositions Room which was designed, as its name suggests, for large industrial exhibitions. The lovely hardwood floor, polished and shining, was at least as large as a basketball court and the only seating was on the rather narrow mezzanine that circled the room. In our favor was that the Royal Festival Hall had been recently renovated and was getting nice press and word of mouth. It sounded like an attractive lunch venue.
Sounded like that is ... until the guests were seated.
“This isn’t gonna work, John” I declared brilliantly.
“You’re right, Bob,” John replied just as brightly. “We must fill up the floor somehow.”
“With what?” I asked losing none of my dazzle.
“Well,” John suggested this time completing a Hail Mary, “maybe we can rent one of the Coldstream Guard boxes from in front of Buckin’em.”
Not to be outdone I suggested, “And maybe we could hire one of the guardsmen in his red dress uniform and big bearskin cap to stand at attention in front of the box, then perform a long about-face, or some military movement, every 10 minutes or so?”
Off we went to Whitehall Street and the headquarters of the Coldstream Guards. Because I was an American and Yank tourists were still relatively rare in London, we eventually got an audience with Major Trevor Sharp (a name right out of Hollywood but a real name and a real British Major ... right out of Hollywood), Commandant of Her Majesty’s Coldstream Guards Band. After explaining our budget predicament, the basketball floor impediment, the seven plane loads of Yanks who were coming and submitting our request for a Guard Box and a single Guardsman, Major Trevor Sharpe asked, “Why don’t you hire her Majesty’s Coldstream Guards Band?”
“We had no idea the Coldstream Guard ...” I don’t remember if we said it out loud or just shrieked it in our heads, “were for hire!” But we did recap our budget pickle.
We must have said it out loud as the Major replied, “Well, they never have been (hired), but I see no reason why we can’t work something out to please the Yanks. After all they did do us a service in the last few wars.”
In conclusion, Major Trevor Sharpe “rented” the Coldstream Guards Band to us for (the equivalent of) $600 U.S. per performance.
We created a staple highlight of every proper incentive trip to London for the last 40, and the next 40, years. Because we were out of budget.
OK, so now tell me you don’t have the budget ...