Incentive travel is about offering luxury travel escapes as recognition and reward for employees who have excelled at their jobs during a specified period of time. In fact, many employees actually prefer a unique travel experience as a reward for a job well done rather than receiving a cash bonus.
Incentive travel should always be tied to a company objective or results to achieve the desired outcomes, rather than merely offering up end of year travel just for the sake of it. If you tie incentive travel in with a particular goal, target or objective that increases company profits, then the incentive scheme will ultimately end up paying for itself and giving the company coffers a nice boost.
Let’s look at some of the key success factors that incentive travel programs will provide if you implement them in 2023 and beyond.
#1 – Cultivate a Team Of Loyal Employees
All businesses, large and small, depend heavily on their employees to operate and turn a profit. If you’ve spent time and resources on acquiring a great team and training them to be proficient at their jobs, you’ll want to do whatever you can to retain your employees. If you’ve got a great stable of workers, you won’t want to lose them.
Offering bonuses such as incentive travel will add to the success factor of the business by ensuring your workforce remains loyal, motivated and happy to stay with the company. By giving your workers a unique and memorable experience, your team will feel far more connected with the company and its vision.
#2 – Increase Productivity and Efficiency Within the Company
Everyone needs reasons to stay motivated, focused and productive. Sometimes, merely the promise of keeping their job is not enough to keep employees on their toes and giving their best efforts. After all, when someone has been performing a particular task or job role for an extended period of time, work can often become routine and boring. This is where added incentives can really be a game changer.
With the promise of luxury travel at the end of the year, or sometime throughout the year, for a job well done or a sales target reached, your workforce will transform from just doing enough to get by, to becoming a thriving machine with increased productivity and efficiency.
Bonuses and incentives are fantastic motivators, which is the reason why they exist in the first place. Being shipped off on an overseas adventure as recognition for all their hard work is one of the best ways to bolster motivation and give productivity a shot in the arm.
#3 – Incentive Travel Will Boost Profits
Because incentive travel schemes are generally directly tied to company objectives in one form or another, this will invariably lead to the scheme giving company profits a nice boost. Rather than incentive travel costing the company money, the results of the scheme itself should provide enough revenue to cover the costs of the travel and increase the company’s profits overall in the process.
#4 – Group Travel Promotes Bonding and Team Building
If the plan is for the entire team to go on a travel adventure together, this is an awesome opportunity to promote unity in the team. In a more relaxed environment, employees will bond with one another, which will lead to increased levels of collaboration and teamwork. Not only will this happen while on holiday, but the benefits of this team building will spill over once everyone is back at work.
The success of your company and how it fares in the future depends heavily on your workforce, so the more team building and bonding sessions you can provide, such as incentive travel experiences, the bigger the impact it will have on the company’s success moving forward.
#5 – Employees Become Better At Setting and Achieving Goals
When incentive travel schemes are tied in with various company objectives or targets, employees will naturally focus more on setting goals to achieve those targets and objectives. Goal setting becomes a habit over time and even during periods where no added incentive is in place, your workforce will naturally start to set targets and goals of their own volition.
As goals and targets are reached, team members will begin to increase their goals, striving for even greater results.
Promoting a culture of goal setting and achieving targets can only spell great news for the business and offering incentive travel rewards is the perfect way to promote goal setting.
#6 – Incentive Travel Establishes a Positive Work Environment
By establishing clear and measurable goals for the end of the year, with incentive travel as the prize, you can vastly improve your company culture and foster a very positive and proactive work environment. Incentive travel is also an exciting topic that will create healthy competition and unification within the team.
A positive workplace is a productive and efficient one, where employees are happy to show up each day and put in their best effort for the business.
#7 – Involve Your Employees In the Travel Planning
If you’re going to be offering an end of year incentive holiday, it’s a good idea to create even more buzz and excitement by having your team involved in the planning process. Everyone could offer ideas on where the team should go for their vacation or team building getaway.
Once a destination has been decided on, employees can offer input on what to do while there, where to stay, as well as research the destination and become more familiar with the region and its culture.
If incentive travel is on the table, then involve your entire team in the planning process to give them even more motivation to achieve the targets and goals required before enjoying their luxury vacation.
The Takeaway
As you can see, there are many benefits to offering incentive travel rewards to your team and combined, they all add up to even greater success for your company. Incentive travel is a fantastic motivator that will get the best out of your team, keeping everyone loyal, motivated and engaged.