Corporate inSITEs survey released by the SITE Foundation provides vital insights around emerging trends in the US market.
The SITE Foundation has launched a White Paper on the future of incentive travel that confirms corporate America’s commitment to incentive travel and indicates a sooner-than-expected return to travel. Nevertheless, safety remains the number one priority for corporate travel organisers.
The White Paper analyses the results of 50 submissions from US Fortune 500 corporations and interprets the extensive verbatims provided by the respondents. They are all intimately involved in the approval, oversight, design, planning, execution or delivery of incentive travel programmes.
The survey participants consist of US-based professionals working in Finance & Insurance, Automotive, FMCG, ICT, Pharma, Direct Selling, Consulting and 10 other industry verticals.
Some of the key findings include:
Belief in travel rewards remains strong in corporate America
When asked to share how committed, or otherwise, the leadership of their corporation was to incentive travel as a key part of their reward and recognition programme, 94 per cent of the 50 companies surveyed state that they are fully supported by the leadership.
A resounding hunger to meet
Underscored by the power of human connections, 82 per cent actively planning in-person travel incentives for 2022 and beyond, with only two per cent of respondents reporting any permanent swing away from in-person incentive travel. The three-year gestation from recovery, forecasted in the Incentive Travel Industry Index in September 2020 is clearly reducing with a two-year recovery looking more likely.
Lessons learnt drive new priorities for companies post-Covid
Contracts/Risk Management and Destination Selection were highlighted as the two most important considerations for the future success of incentive travel programmes. These two considerations stand out dramatically above all others.
Selina Sinclair, CITP, CEO of Realm in Singapore and SITE Foundation’s VP of Content & Research said, “The United States as a source market and destination is very much a bell weather for the future of incentive travel. With responses from 15 key sectoral users of incentive travel in the US, Corporate inSITEs brings us to the heart of corporate America and channels a compelling story of confidence, following almost 18 months of uncertainty.
“Incentive Travel is highly prized as the ultimate reward and recognition tool. It is recovering much quicker than originally expected but there are changing priorities too, with safety and risk mitigation ranked as the ultimate considerations.”
The Corporate inSITEs series, which will be issued three times in 2021, delivers on the association’s mission to support research, education and advocacy projects on behalf of the incentive travel industry. Since 2017, SITE Foundation has invested over USD1.25 million to drive the business case for incentive travel and support professional development within the industry.
Corporate inSITEs: White Paper Edition 1 is available for download free of charge on SITEGlobal along with a PDF of the actual survey results.
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Featured Photo by Luke Porter on Unsplash
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