Hawaiian Air Incentivizes Small Groups

<B>Hawaiian Air Incentivizes Small Groups</B>

By Chris Davis

To bolster corporate group incentive business drawn from the West Coast, Hawaiian Airlines has developed a new program offering prepaid certificates with a set fare and gift certificates in a wide variety of denominations.

In line with the corporate group incentive nature of the program, dubbed "Wings of Paradise," a minimum of five roundtrip fares or 10 inter-island segments must be purchased.

"We've been offering individual incentive certificates for some time, but we've noticed an increase in small group incentives, where companies want a group incentive but don't want to take the whole sales force out of work for a week," said senior director of group sales Janet Yoshida Brown. "Hawaii is the number-three destination choice for incentive travel, and we wanted to capture some of that segment."

Both certificates allow incentive winners to take their reward trips at their leisure, as the prepaid set-fare certificates are valid for a year after purchase. The denomination-specific gift certificates have no expiration dates. There are standard blackout dates applicable to the incentive certificates.

While corporations tend to rotate the destinations of large, annual group incentives on a fairly routine basis, Brown said the carrier has received requests to develop a product in between individual and annual incentives.

"While much of destination selection is beyond our control, due to the cyclical nature of it, our clients have a demand for smaller programs and we've looked for ways of putting it together," Brown said.

Hawaiian Airlines flies to seven locations in the islands from five points on the mainland--Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., San Francisco and Seattle--as well as from Tahiti and American Samoa.

While there are no hotel or resort packages combined with Hawaiian's incentive offerings, it's an area that Brown would consider exploring further. "It would be easy to make that part of our program and we might work with hotels in the future," she said, "but we'll keep it simple for now, and see how this goes first.