NZ treats a powerful incentive for staff

Many international companies reward their high performers with lavish overseas trips, and New Zealand is high on their visiting list. Amanda Cropp reports.

Until recently the international incentive travel market had a fairly low profile outside the tourism industry. That all changed when health and beauty company Amway announced it would shout 10,000 of its top salespeople a trip to Queenstown in 2018, injecting $50 million into the economy.

There’s a lot to like about these travellers. They usually come outside peak season, some return with their families for a longer stay, and they spend like there is no tomorrow.

A chopper ride to sip champagne on Cecil Peak above Lake Wakatipu, dinners on private yachts, bush walks with costumed Lord of the Rings characters – the search is always on for activities with wow factor.

An Asian paint company invested $3m to bring 800 staff to New Zealand on a jaunt that featured a gala dinner at Eden Park complete with laser show and imported Bollywood dancers, along with a day trip to Waitomo Caves, Rotorua and Hobbiton. A camera crew filmed proceedings and everyone got a souvenir video of the activities.

Anna Black from General Travel organised that trip, but said not all companies go quite so far.

‘‘I’ve had 50 corporates from Mumbai who had a gala dinner at an Indian restaurant with a DJ and an iPod.’’

Winning incentive travel contracts is tough. Black’s successful pitch to bring 650 Malaysian Amway sellers here in 2008 was up against iconic destinations such as Venice, and it was two years in the making.

Last year events, business gatherings, conferences and incentive travel to New Zealand earned about $472m.

There were just over 1100 incentive events, a rise of almost 50 per cent, and both Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) and industry body Conventions and Incentives New Zealand (CINZ) are determined to grow that.

TNZ has spent $21m over the past three years to help secure conference and incentive travel business and in the nine months to March it notched up 58 successful incentive bids, most of them in the shoulder season.

Incentive travel buyer Larry Gelwix from Salt Lake City, Utah, was here for the recent CINZ trade show in Auckland.

He said New Zealand’s diverse combination of mountains, beaches, farmland, and Maori culture was a big drawcard, as was our safety record, especially since the terrorist attacks in Europe.

Gelwix said recipients of incentive travel were not just salespeople or white-collar executives.

‘‘We have clients that are construction companies, lumber companies, auto dealers, car parts manufacturers and multi-level marketers.

‘‘People are looking for adventures that they would probably never do on their own.’’

Companies were often judged on the standard of their incentive travel, Gelwix said. The insurance brokers he hobnobbed with in Monte Carlo last month were comparing the over-the-top luxury of their hotel with the cheap trip offered by a competing insurance company.

The company that went for the luxury option had grown 52 per cent in seven years. ‘‘The president publicly said ‘we’d never have done it without our incentive programme’. Nobody wants to waste money or be taken advantage of, but he’s willing to spend money because he understands the return on his investment.’’

Alison Smith is the director of sales, conferences and incentives for Millennium and Copthorne hotels in New Zealand and has sold incentive travel for 20 years.

She said as a way of building staff loyalty, it was more powerful than a cash bonus. ‘‘If you give them $5000 cash, it’s not as emotional as giving them a trip with memories.’’

Some companies included partners and families on incentive trips and sent out postcards of their next destination. ‘‘They post it home to the wife so she encourages her husband to work harder so they get to go.’’

The majority of last year’s incentive events went to Auckland (268), closely followed by Wellington (176) and Christchurch (149).

But both Air New Zealand and Christchurch International Airport are providing funding to help regional tourism operators attract more incentive travellers to their areas.

Destination Great Lake Taupo’s business events and trade manager Karen Rainbow said the region was new to the incentives market but the groups they got were hugely valuable.

‘‘The type of people coming here have a big network of work colleagues and friends, so we see other business coming from it – corporate retreats, other incentive business, and just holidays.’’

They tended to undertake lessrisky activities and although snow was a great novelty for Indian incentive groups, they generally opted for sledding, rather than skiing.

‘‘They don’t want to bring them over and take them home with casts on their legs and arms. Safety is really important.’’

‘If you give them $5000 cash, it’s not as emotional as giving them a trip with memories.’