Incentive Travel: A View from the Top

Meetings, incentives, conventions, and exhibitions are an important segment of the hospitality and tourism industry. The extant study focuses on the incentives or incentive travel. While incentive travel has existed for decades it is a relatively under-researched sub-field of hospitality. The goal of this article is to examine the current state of incentive travel, how it has changed over the past few years, and how it is likely to change in the future. Rather than examine every aspect of incentive travel, this research only looks at “buyers” of incentive travel rather than users or recipients and obtains data only from top-level corporate executives. Thus, the results are of the highest level and highest caliber. It was found that companies have been using incentive travel for decades and find it to be an effective employee motivator and as an incentive to sell product. It also builds morale and relationships.