MICE: Incentive Travel = the “I” in MICE
There is no universally agreed category header to describe the industry and marketplace variously known as The Meetings Industry, MICE, Business Tourism, The C & I sector, Business Events, The Meetings and Events Industry.
Different Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) favour different category headers and, moreover, argue vehemently against the use of others.
MICE, an acronym meaning Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Events is widely used in Asia and Europe but often disliked in North America and Australia where Business Events has gained currency. The UK prefers The Meetings Industry.
Incentive Travel is the “I” in MICE. While corporate meetings usually seek to inform or educate participants, incentive travel seeks to motivate and inspire them. Incentive travel is described by the Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE) as
“... a powerful business tool to reward and unlock human potential to achieve corporate objectives.”
Incentive travel, therefore, is about reward and recognition – rewarding team members with an extraordinary travel experience for delivering outstanding results, recognising these high achievers before their peers and publicly validating their achievements.
For incentive programmes, the “appeal” of the destination is crucial as an all expenses VIP trip to this destination is the prize or the reward awaiting the qualifiers (those who exceed the targets set for qualification for the trip). Unless the destination is truly attractive and appealing, it will not trigger the emotional reaction necessary to motivate the employee to qualify for the trip .
The objectives of an incentive travel programme are many and can include:
- increasing sales
- building morale and loyalty
- increasing market share
- encouraging teamwork and better customer service
Incentive travel is used as a motivational tool across many industry sectors but is used particularly by the following ones:
- Financial and Insurance
- Automotive
- Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)
- Direct Selling Companies (sometimes known as Network Marketing)
The supply chain for incentive travel starts with the organisation that decides to launch an incentive travel program (often called the “end user” or corporate planner) and includes a plethora of suppliers including specialist agencies in both the source market and destination, airlines, transportation companies, hotels, venues, restaurants, visitor attractions, speaker bureaux and AV / Production companies.
Of all the MICE segments, Incentive Travel is accepted as the segment that deploys the most touch points in both a source market and a destination.
Often the supply chain is divided into Buyers (corporate end user, agencies in source market) and Suppliers (airlines, agencies in destination, hotels, venues etc).