Designed to reward those who perform at the highest levels in your organization, travel incentive programs have a proven positive impact on engagement, motivation and employee loyalty. Unfortunately, many organizations struggle to design the right program for their needs. Here are nine tips to help you to create a seamless travel incentive program that will inspire and motivate your teams.

1. Make qualification clear

Do the people understand what they need to do to qualify for the incentive travel program? Are their daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals aligned to achieving a place in the President’s Club, for example? Make sure everyone understands what is expected of them throughout the duration of the program.

2. Communicate updates regularly

Keep people engaged in the program by giving them regular updates about how they’re performing. Communicated through your social recognition solution, these status updates are essential to keeping individuals motivated and on track toward their goals.

3. Make sure everyone has a fair chance of making it

To keep motivation and engagement high, the incentive travel reward needs to be within everyone’s reach, which is why strategic goal setting is an essential part of the process. Remember, people reach for goals that are within reach.

4. Create a healthy competition culture

Create ongoing goals and competitions throughout the year that foster healthy competition. Acknowledging positive behaviors and achievements along the way can help contribute to a healthy competitive culture.

5. Recognize people when you’re there

Rewarding people for work well done with travel incentives is an excellent motivator, but you can make the trip even more memorable by giving people specific recognition in front of their esteemed peers.

6. Give them freedom

When people take a vacation (especially if this is the only vacation they will take this year), they need time to recharge their batteries. It’s important to give them time on their own during a group incentive travel program.

7. Create exciting yet relevant activities

Make sure your activities are relevant to the culture and behaviors you’re trying to cultivate. Fun activities are great (and the fun element should certainly be a priority – it is a vacation after all).

8. Make it measurable

“Based on information compiled by The Incentive Marketing Association, only 22% of all companies who use incentive travel measure its impact.”

Most people can ‘feel’ that an incentive travel program is engaging and motivating employees, but they don’t have hard evidence. Download our white paper to find out more about how to measure the return on investment of your incentive travel program.

9. Keep the memories alive

Incentive travel programs give employees the opportunity to create residual memories that are “rechargeable” long after the vacation experience. You don’t want people to forget those positive vibes so, once you return, plan a get-together so that everyone can share memories, re-live the trip, and build momentum and interest in next year’s trip.