(Originally published October 10, 2005)
St. Louis — Napa Valley, Calif., or Bordeaux, France? A week-long trip for all award winners, or shorter stays with smaller groups? Incentive travel planners often struggle to decide just which program will be the most motivating for their audience.
Now, Maritz Travel has a product, unveiled last month at The Motivation Show in Chicago, to identify what participants want, from destination type to activity options and program structure.
The new tool, called Travel Insight, addresses these needs via direct audience feedback.
"Travel incentive design is often based on past experience or gut instinct of the management team and planner," said Keith Chrzan, division vice president of marketing science for Maritz Research. "This tool helps build a fact-based foundation using end-customer preferences to develop the right travel incentive program that will motivate the most number of people."
Travel Insight surveys employees and measures the impact on motivation of different elements that make up a travel program. The online questionnaire is designed to quantify respondents' selections based on what-if scenarios.
Participants are shown a series of two different side-by-side trips, and are asked to choose the one they would work harder to obtain. They're also given a series of four activity options and must identify the ones they would most and least like to do.
Managers can use the results to build and compare different trips and activities. Often, final choices involve conflicting options.
"Maritz Travel Insight results demonstrate what preferences participants are willing to trade off for a more motivating experience," said Chris Gaia, division vice president for Maritz Travel.
"The tools enable companies to build customized questions to determine how to motivate the 80 percent of the so-called middle performers who don't typically earn trips."
To establish a prototype, Maritz surveyed those of its clients with more than 500 employees. It received 884 responses to the three-part questionnaire, which studied 15 elements of program design and 17 types of activities and demographics. Options included trip length, destination, whether children could attend, open versus close-ended programs, the opportunity to interact with senior management, and preferences among golf, spa, shopping, dining, tours, etc.
Key findings show that 76 percent of the sample prefer small trip sizes and flexible agendas, over larger groups with a fixed agenda. Next in importance were program length (72 percent want sevennight stays), having the company foot all costs, and type of guests.
Top activities were beach, sun and water sports; leisure time; and local dining. At the opposite end were ecotourism experiences, and hunting and fishing. Surprisingly, golf was third from the bottom. Even when male-only respondents (61 percent) were plugged into the program, golf moved up only a few notches, but remained below spa/health/wellness, which came in fourth overall.
Cost for the whole process can range up to $75,000 per customer, but pricing for current Maritz clients may be blended into their current contracts, noted Maritz spokeswoman Caila Coughlin.