Incentive Travel, Meetings and Events Encounter the Economic Turndown

Any of us who have lived in the industrialized world from 2008 to 2010, have encountered some variation of the economic downturn in one form or another. Some of us have been more affected by the new realities than others, some directly, some through the ripples of someone else's direct economic hit.

This has especially hit companies which in turn has affected individuals. During this time companies have needed to come up with alternate ways of doing business and rewarding their employees for doing the business of the company without breaking their more limited budget.

In this article I present some different ways that individual companies have solved the situations that they have found themselves in, the ripple effects that came out of those choices and a helpful suggestion that might help for future plans:

In the first situation, a company found themselves in the position where they needed to cancel their incentive cruise three weeks before it set sail into the Caribbean. That would have been the loss of more than a million dollars. The company contacted the organizer of the cruise to see if they could help them find a group that could
benefit from the situation.

The organizer, Worldwide Travel & Cruise Associates Inc, suggested that they donate the cruise to a nonprofit. With the help of Pinnacle Events and Avon Puerto Rico, they chose the American Cancer Society. Pinnacle Events asked two car companies, who had just postponed their incentive trips, if they wanted to be involved.

Within one weekend through networking, some legal changes in contracts and itinerary adjustments, to take care of the change in participants and their different time requirements, they were able to arrange for the rooms to be auctioned off to the employees of the two car companies and participants in a large function for the American Cancer Society.

The result was a $150,000 donation to the American Cancer Society, 300 hundred people who not only got to participate in helping a needed cause but got to enjoy a cruise which benefited the economies of the Caribbean nations that they visited during that cruise.
Geraldine Gatehouse

In the next event, Cisco came up with another way of holding all of their 2009 affairs as well as their annual global sales meetings, since the economy was in such bad shape at the time.

They normally held their annual meeting in Las Vegas, where they flew in 14,000 globally located salespeople as well as their company executives for a time of motivational speeches, training sessions and personal recognition of accomplishments of the previous year, in a party atmosphere. Instead, they decided to stage everything from a virtual platform for that year, due to the economy and to see how well it would work.

They knew that since their employees were used to a high powered event with networking, nice personal perks and personal recognition, that the replacement couldn't just be a virtual meeting. They needed to come up with something that would capture their interest and participation.

With the collaboration of the George P. Johnson marketing agency, jUXT Interactive, and virtual events provider InXpo they were able to successfully stage a virtual reality game along with three more traditional games, with chat rooms, exclusive areas for high scorers and earners set in some of the participating countries and spanning 104 countries with an invitation list of 22,000 people which included their support staff.

The main game involved a global hunt for stolen technology and had clues stretching across the globe as well as inserted into the virtual sessions of the main GSX event, itself. The solutions required team involvement across all national barriers.

The company used their technology to go beyond where they had gone before to use actual experience to teach their people what their clients could get out of the products they sell.

What came out of this experience? First Cisco found 13,000 of the expected 7,000 of the 19,000 GSX participants, participated. Those involved saw that if they cooperated in real-time the way they had in virtual reality that they would be a lot more successful. The feedback from participants rated the education from the experience to be as good or better than the real-time events. The company saved 90 percent of the cost that the live event would have cost.

The drawbacks were two things: 1, The amount of time and hours required in setting this up, which would take from six months to a year to originally set up, then it could be used again every six months. 2, The recognition for successful completion of quotas and/or the game wasn't as satisfying in virtual reality even with real gift cards
as the face-to-face recognition with the CEO, special rooms, and seating and other perks such as personal meetings with entertainers that the live events offered.

Another thing that came out of this were three virtual reality platforms for meetings which range from a totally customized permanent unit to a semi-customized to a plug-and-play version.

Cisco decided that for 2010 that their programs will combine the virtual reality with live events and hopes to save around 50 to 60 percent off of the totally live events.

In a possible ripple effect to what Cisco did in 2009, Marriott International set up their first virtual Cisco TelePresence conferencing sites in New York and Washington DC in January 2010. Starwood set up their first two studios in Chicago and Sydney in February and plan by the end of the year to have additional sites in New York, Toronto and Los Angelos.

Their plan is to also install the studios in San Francisco, Dallas, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and Hong Kong.

This last helpful bit is in way of a suggestion for future contracts for your meetings and corporate travel plans.

When drawing up the contract of expectations for your planned event, have a clause inserted, if it's not already in the paperwork, that allows for renegotiation of the contract, if there is an economic downturn that influences your company's fulfillment of their contracted obligations. It needs to be measurable by a recognizable and mutually agreed upon consumer price index. This should to be written into the contract.

By telling the vendor that you are negotiating for a possible lowering of the obligation, if necessary, as a safety net and not for canceling the entire event, they could be more willing to cooperate with you. It would also be helpful to tell them that you don't anticipate such an occurrence to happen but that if it does it would be helpful
to be prepared for all contingencies.

Additional Reading:

Beauty Tips for Those Who Travel

How to Get Your Gift Items Safely to Your Destination

Safety Tips for Solo Travel

Affordable Lodging in the East Tampa Bay Area

Sources:

Good Citizenship Comes Aboard, Geraldine Gatehouse, P 13-14, Successful Meetings, 01/10

http://www.mimegasite.com/mimegasite/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004059776
Cisco Pushes Virtual Boundaries, January 18, 2010, Leo Jakobson

http://www.btnonline.com/businesstravelnews/headlines/meetings_today_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004070548
Starwood Launches First Two TelePresence Sites In Chicago, Sydney, Michael B. Baker

http://www.mimegasite.com/mimegasite/articles/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004061160
Meetings Law: Clause & Effect, January 22, 2010, D. Benson Tesdahl, Esq.