As the incentive travel industry continues to rebound and membership in the association sits at a record high, the new president of the Society of Incentive & Travel Executives plans to launch several new programs and carry on efforts initiated by his predecessors to expand SITE's educational offerings and raise awareness about the benefits of membership.
Lex Granaada, the managing partner of Granaada & Partner, an incentive marketing consultancy based in the Netherlands, began his one-year term as SITE's leader at its annual conference held earlier this month in Toronto. He replaced Bill Boyd, president and CEO of Sunbelt Motivation & Travel in Irving, Texas
(Meetings Today, Sept. 20, 2004).Research, Granaada said, has shown that travel is the "leading" motivator for most people. "In my own practice throughout the years, I have witnessed situations in which clients went from incentives to material goods and cash. In all cases, the emotional value of travel brought them back to that instrument after having tested the material rewards," he explained. "The long-lasting added value of emotional memories is certainly not to be underestimated."
More opportunities are being created for "consultancy and profound advice" in the incentive travel industry, Granaada said. "We continue to see a rebound. The world is divided into regional and continental fractions, but in Europe, the business is absolutely picking up."
Despite the war in Iraq, the occasional terrorist threat and other global crises, international incentive travel is steadily improving, he said.
"To my feelings, the human nature becomes immune in a way to all the terror and devastating effects of natural disasters and political unrest. People tend to forget quicker and quicker, with media presenting them flashes of disaster every new day," he said.
He admitted that international incentive travel still is more common in Europe than in the United States. "Distances in the U.S. are vast and some incentive programs are carried out within the U.S. In Europe, with its significantly smaller distances from one country to the other and its everstronger network of low-cost carriers, international travel is very common. Asia/Pacific moves somewhere in between those extremes, with a surging trend of China becoming a very big market for in- and outbound incentives," he said.
Granaada said the most significant recent development in the industry is "the bundled buying power from the big corporate clients."
"It is something we are seeing over the last few years," he said. "The focus is globally shifting slowly from incentives to business events, especially in Europe. A well-attended concern for SITE is the always-present challenge to reach an ever-changing membership in demographic composition, in so many different countries with so much diversity." He said SITE has appointed a diversity committee to address the needs of its members around the world.
Granaada has several goals for his presidency. "I plan to continue working to increase awareness of SITE, overall value of membership and business-to-business relationships—all part of the strategic plan."
Initiatives currently being developed or expanded will focus on online learning and other educational opportunities, SITE chapter expansion, an incentive practitioners scholarship, and SITE's Certified Incentive Travel Executive accreditation program, he said. FutureSITE, an endowment fund that will support educational programs, scholarships, membership growth and research projects, was recently unveiled and is currently being refined, he said.
SITE has retained 85 percent of its members in the last year and has recruited over 500 new members, a growth rate "well above the industry standard," Granaada said. "The current SITE membership is the highest in the organization's history, representing some 2,000 incentive and travel executives from more than 80 countries. I certainly expect this to continue."
While Granaada is the first SITE president to come from the Netherlands, he is not the first to hail from Europe. "SITE is the world's leading association for incentive travel and performance improvement, and has a board of directors that is geographically represented by its members' origins," he said.
One key advantage of SITE membership is that it offers tremendous opportunity for networking and for members to learn from one another, Granaada said. SITE recently produced a new edition of its Incentive Travel Contract Handbook to help members "develop practical, user-friendly contacts that benefit themselves and their business partners."
"SITE members find a large variety of ways to motivate workers," Granaada said. "In Toronto, at our international conference, we honored the best incentive campaigns, special/motivational events and promotion campaigns through our Crystal Awards program. The programs were evaluated in the areas of return on investment/budget maximization, creativity, logistics, and their ability to overcome program and implementation challenges. Above all, programs were evaluated based on their ability to deliver results that are superior in nature."