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.
In my younger years, it was a long time ago, I was a department store buyer and experienced the power of a travel incentive personally.
Sitting at home one night I received a call about 10:30 PM from a salesman I had little respect for, or dealings with. I had ordered him, in an angry moment, to never talk to me again, to deal only with one of my assistants. Yet that night at 10:30 PM he called me!
“Bob, you have to help me, please!”
“Don, why would I help you? I don’t like you, I don’t even like to talk to you.”
“Bob, $6,700, just a clock order for $6,700 and Judy and I will win the contest and a week in Maui this February. It’s only $6,700, you won’t even notice it on your open-to-buy! It’s a week with Judy in Maui, Bob, you can’t say no. You can’t.”
He was right. I couldn’t, and I didn’t. And he and Judy went to Maui in February.
In my younger years I was, I admit, abrasive and unkind. In fact, if I met that young Bob Guerriero today, I wouldn’t like him much. In my defense I was young ... and I was scared. I hadn’t accomplished much to that point in time, and that frightening dread – will I ever? – was always, it seems, at the forefront of my consciousness.
I digress, it isn’t important, why I was so rude. What is important is the question: What power could compel a man to brace a hostile force; in it’s own sanctuary, in it’s private and personal time?
The answer: The power of travel as a motivation tool. I never forgot. And it is why, as a client, I ran one of the first major distributor incentives to Rome, Italy in 1964. And why I started The Journeymasters in 1968.
Bob Guerriero
Founder & President of The Journeymasters
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 ...
The city was Florence. The place was the Accademia Gallery. The event was the first private dinner ever in the Tribuna, the special area that showcases Michelangelo's DAVID. The night was titled "Dinner with David," created for our client and their 209 dealer guests. It became the most remarkable evening in the lives of all those present.
A night of legend and elation
7:00 pm. All tourists were gone from the museum. We moved in a mountain of chairs, tables, kitchen equipment, et al - to make David's Tribuna and The Corridor of Prisoners a wondrous dining room.
...and there was David
In the meantime, professional guides of Florence took our guests on a private tour of the Academy and then to the Hall of the Colossus where an Italian string quartet offered a suitable baroque musical background to their cocktail reception.
8:15 pm. We announced dinner. Guests entered ... and there was David and the Prisoners in breathtaking majesty!
An irrefutably elegant dinner, as befitted the occasion, followed. But the evening of legend and elation was far from finished for we had brought The Three Tenors - No not those three tenors - The Three Tenors from Milan's La Scala Opera House - to sing the well known arias from recognized Italian Operas to our guests to ensure the night would be forever after... legendary!
Five standing ovations later. Five demands for encore after encore later, and the tenors were allowed, regretfully, to depart.
It was a memorable evening. It followed faithfully the credo The Journeymasters espoused in our original 1968 portfolio ...
"It is the aim of The Journeymasters to run the external portion of a travel incentive (the trip itself) in a way the guests could not duplicate, no matter how wealthy they were nor how much of their wealth they were willing to spend."
It made sense to us in 1968, it makes sense to us today. If it makes sense to you also, perhaps you should talk to us before you commit to your next incentive travel journey. We, after all, are not called The Journeymasters for nothing.
Do you wish, maybe, that
you had been there?