Egypt and Vietnam hot lures for incentive travel

Companies preparing their staff or supplier travel incentive programs for the next 12 months are looking to Egypt and Vietnam to get the competitive juices flowing, according to specialist organiser CiEvents.

Old reliables New York and Paris are also on the list and guaranteed to capture the imagination, while Shanghai and India were likely future choices designed to send those sales figures climbing.

David Cox, director of relationship marketing at CiEvents, Flight Centre Limited’s conference, exhibition and incentive travel planning arm, said a successful incentive travel destination had that ‘wow” factor that would motivate people to achieve particular goals.

“You want to put together a program that has aspirational value – for instance, somewhere they haven’t been before – and that the itinerary represents something that they can’t recreate by themselves at a later stage.

“Or, it could be an iconic city like Paris or New York. As soon as you think of those destinations you can see that you can tap into so many angles to motivate people and keep them focused.

“And we look for those types of destinations so that people get excited.”

Mr Cox said Egypt and Vietnam were proving popular choices for incentive packages in 2006, while Hayman Island in the Whitsundays was a local favourite.

Shanghai and India had also started to appear on the incentive travel radar.

“A lot of people are starting to go to Shanghai because it’s an exciting, newish destination for a number of organisations. And India appears to be right back on the horizon again, with people wanting to experience some of the sub-continent’s exoticism.”

Sporting events like the Monaco Grand Prix and Wimbledon were always certain to get sports fans’ pulses racing, while the Soccer World Cup was now a hot ticket item – although it was probably now too late for it to be included in a company’s incentive plans.

“If it’s a regular fixture that doesn’t rely on national team qualification – say, the Monaco Grand Prix, or Wimbledon – they are quite popular to offer as incentives.

“The soccer world cup wouldn’t have got much excitement until Australia qualified – then there’s suddenly a rush to see whether you’ve left it too late to organise.

“There’s only a limited number of tickets available but if someone wanted to offer that as an incentive we’d bend over backwards to organise it for them. After all, it’s our job to make the impossible become reality.”

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