Three Questions Incentive Travel Professionals are Bringing to Las Vegas
IMEX America has always been the moment when the industry stops talking about itself and starts listening. This October, that dynamic carries extra weight. SITE and the IRF will launch the seventh edition of the Incentive Travel Index on Monday 13 October at Mandalay Bay, and if the research gathered across 2026 is any guide, the questions it will answer have been building quietly for some time. Here are three of the most pressing.
Are we growing, or are we just stretching ourselves thinner?
Last year’s edition (2025) of the ITI offered a broadly positive picture but one with a fault line running through it. Thirty percent of buyers expected activity above current levels for the year ahead. What was less discussed was the budget quality data sitting beneath that headline: 23% of respondents said they were improving programmes in terms of quality and spend per head, while 24% were trimming.
The FICP 2026 Pulse Survey, conducted in May among 143 financial and insurance meetings professionals, adds an interesting counterpoint. Incentive travel is rebounding in that sector, with 25% of meetings professionals expecting an increase in the number of incentive programmes for 2027, up from just 14.3% in last year’s survey.
So the tension ahead of Las Vegas is a real one: is the industry growing in ways that strengthen the product, or is volume increasing while quality is quietly being conceded?
ITI 2026 will tell us.
Has geopolitical risk permanently rewired how destinations get chosen?
The SITE Pulse Survey on destination selection, conducted across 193 respondents in March and April of this year, produced one of the most striking findings of the 2026 research cycle. Sentiment toward the Gulf States dropped sharply and consistently across every respondent group. Europe and Canada emerged as clear beneficiaries, functioning as perceived safe harbours. Non-US respondents registered notably negative intent toward the United States as a destination.
For the first time in its history, ITI 2026 includes a dedicated geopolitical risk block, asking respondents not only about their concerns but about the concrete booking behaviour changes they have already made: destinations quietly dropped from shortlists, confirmed programmes relocated, international itineraries substituted with domestic alternatives.
Whether this represents a structural shift or a cyclical correction is the question the industry most needs answered.
Does the qualifier actually want what we are offering them?
The Maritz intergenerational research, launched earlier this year in partnership with the SITE Foundation, put the qualifier voice at the centre of the conversation in ways the industry has rarely attempted. It raised an uncomfortable possibility: that the programmes being designed and the destinations being selected reflect planner preferences and procurement logic more than they reflect what the earner of the award would freely choose.
ITI 2026 includes a new qualifier voice block, asking directly how well today’s incentive experiences are delivering on what qualifiers actually want. The gap between what professionals assume and what recipients expect could be among the most revealing data points the Index has ever produced.
Las Vegas will not supply all the answers.
But for the first time in a long time, we are arriving with the right questions.
The Incentive Travel Index 2026 launches at IMEX America on Monday 13 October, Mandalay Bay
