Part III

Incentive tourism means travels financed by the company to give an incentive to employees as the appraisal of their work, to facilitate the teamwork and to stimulate work motivation. World annual turnover of incentive tourism exceeds $8 million, 80 % of which is spent on transport, accommodation and foods services, and only 15 % is spent on sightseeing and entertainment programs. Throughout the world 70 % of all incentive tours are to Europe, 10 % are to the USA thought 60 % of all incentive tourists are Americans, and 15 % of the tours are to the South East Asia. The average duration of an incentive tour is from 3 to 7 days.

Incentive tours are becoming more diverse, both in the choice of the countries and in the tour programs. Some intensive tours are aimed at business activities or interests of the tourists, i.e. historical or wine tours; there are also separate “mass” tours for ordinary employees and VIP programs for senior management. The latter prefer adventure tourism or even extreme tourism such as auto rallies or balloon flying.

Recently senior management of many companies prefers investing money not into traditional entertainment incentive tours but in team-building tours. In this matter, travel agencies work together with business consulting companies, professional psychologists, etc. The example can be so called “rope-courses”. They last for 3—4 days and are comprised of different activities including sport, adventure and extreme. The emphasis of the courses is placed not on sport abilities of the participants, but on effective teamwork, problem solution, leadership skills development and behaviour adjustment to different situations and sudden changes. Some travel agencies called incentive houses specialize at incentive tours only.

Questions:

1. What is incentive tourism?

2. What is the world annual turnover of incentive tours?

3. What are incentive tours aimed at?

4. What kinds of incentive programs exist?

5. What does senior management prefer investing money into?

6. Summarize the text.