In December 1973, during a meeting of 11 attendees at the Americana Hotel, the Society of Incentive Travel Executives (SITE) was formed with Anne Wold-Graham as its first president. 

In February 2023 the association returned to New York City bringing over 800 incentive travel professionals from all over the world to celebrate 50 years of incentive travel excellence. 

In the intervening years it changed the meaning of its acronym twice (first Society of Incentive & Travel Executives and then Society for Incentive Travel Excellence), it altered its logo a few times and, with five presidents serving two-year terms, was led by 45 presidents, 15 women and 30 men. 

But one thing did not change: SITE’s resolute and firm focus on incentive travel as a business management tool, capable of transforming individuals, companies and the destinations they visit. It is good to remind ourselves of this.

When we link incentive travel and business management we provide the correct and necessary interpretative context. Incentive travel and business management are inextricably linked, the former working as a direct consequence of the latter. 

And despite the use of the word ‘travel’ in its descriptor, incentive travel is fundamentally, and primarily, a business tool, not a tourism niche. 

This simple fact often gets lost and it’s easy to see why. 

Firstly, incentive travel is often claimed and measured as tourism revenue by DMOs, rather than inward investment by FDI agencies. 

Secondly, companies tend to budget for it under business travel rather than HR or sales. 

Thirdly, the ‘incentive travel industry’ is predominantly comprised of supply chain players, not corporate end users. 

There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with the practices listed above – that’s just the way things have evolved – but it does underline the importance of organisations like SITE that place the emphasis where it needs to be placed: on incentive travel as a business tool. 

But SITE goes further, and claims that incentive travel is capable of transforming individuals, companies and the destinations they visit. 

A step too far?

No, not at all, but we may need to be more intentional in our planning to really ignite the transformation. 

When incentive travel experiences take qualifiers where they’d never go on their own dollar – both physically and emotionally – then transformation is possible. That’s when you get into ‘travel as brutality’ (Cesare Pavese) or Mark Twain’s ‘travel as the enemy of bigotry’. 

Likewise, when companies invest in creating truly transformational trips, they foster ever deeper connections with their people, build unbreakable bonds between qualifiers and leadership, talk and walk their culture. 

Destinations are transformed too. Purposeful, intentional destination selection will provide for legacy building with the impact of the incentive trip extending way beyond mere financial contribution, to include knowledge transfer, support for social enterprises etc. 

So let’s salute SITE as it starts to celebrate its golden jubilee and thank it, and organisations like it, for reminding us that incentive travel is way more than a paid holiday in the sun.