Pádraic Gilligan, chief marketing officer of Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE), examines the Snakes and Ladders road to recovery
In April 2021, SITE Foundation launched Corporate inSITEs, a research study into the changing face of incentive travel. The second edition of the research, conducted in late August/early September and launched in October, reveals some notable changes.
The April edition of Corporate inSITEs, with responses from 50 US corporations, revealed that almost all respondents had wholehearted support for their incentive travel programmes from their company leadership.
The report also pointed to a much swifter than anticipated resumption of travel events, with live incentives set to take place in Q3 and Q4 of 2021. Changes in priorities were noted, too, with respondents spotlighting contracts as a top concern and choosing safety as their number one criterion for destination selection.
Fast forward to late August/September and we see a weakening of sentiment on the part of corporate leadership, postponement of Q3 and Q4 programmes into 2022 and further priority changes, particularly regarding sustainability and industry connections.
The airy spring light of April is replaced by the late summer gloom of August as the Delta variant takes hold in the US, and the vaccination programme peters off, having started so well. This is the underlying story of Corporate inSITEs, Edition 2.
Yet signs of tentative green shoots continue. One US Financial & Insurance company that mandated vaccines for all participants managed to operate five incentive programmes between June and September, although participation was down by as much as 50% on some events, as the requirement to be vaccinated was too much for some US qualifiers.
So, we’re getting there, but not as quickly as we may have hoped, going on the semi-euphoria of the April survey results. But if sentiment is stirred and shaken in the late August Corporate inSITEs, there are other underlying items worth calling out for the positive slant they place on how US corporations are seeing incentive travel.
There is a welcome increase in focus on sustainability – up 11% in August on its April ranking – proving that sustainability and all its wide ranging implications are becoming more a ‘must have’ than a ‘like to have’ and underlining that ongoing change in corporate direction where shareholder value is, increasingly, seen as one, and only one, of the multifarious objectives of which contemporary corporations need to be mindful.
Also Corporate inSITEs Edition 2 now ranks Destination Appeal in top spot again (6.5), followed by Safety (5.8) and Infrastructure (5.6). While Safety is still a top 3 criterion, this suggests a normalisation of sentiment and hints at an underlying conviction that we are definitely, and decisively, on the road to recovery!
So recovery continues, but it’s two steps forward, one step back for the moment. We need to keep the faith, be patient and accept that it’ll be early 2022 before we can really expect to see the bountiful signs of Spring “…when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush”.
