The media authority on incentive travel, Prevue has just released a new survey focused on corporate in-house incentive planners: the First-Annual Corporate Incentive Trends Survey.
The Corporate Incentive Trends Survey is based on responses from 382 planners from Prevue’s audience. Respondents came from a variety of industries, with the largest percentage coming from technology (26%), financial and insurance (24%) and manufacturing (23%), followed by automotive, direct sales and other industries. The majority of respondents plan incentives that target the sales force (47%), dealers/distributors (44%) or the distribution channel (22%), though a quarter of companies said they run incentive trips for employees whose roles are not directly tied to sales quotas.
2023 was a turnaround year, according to the results. Budgets are up, international trips are back and the outlook for this year looks bright.
60% of respondents reported that their companies’ sales increased in 2023, with another 21% saying that sales had remained the same as in 2022. That growth filtered down to incentive budgets, with 51 percent of respondents saying their budgets had increased in 2023; however, a significant number (35%) reported having to work with the same budgets in 2023 as they had in 2022. There were also a small number of respondents (15%) doing more with less. The outlook for 2024 is slightly more positive, with 58% of respondents saying their incentive budgets will increase; however, 24% saying they will stay the same and 18% who will be working with smaller budgets.
The average per-person budget for 2023 incentives was $6,177, which increased from last year for 49% of the respondents, stayed the same for 30% and decreased for 21% of respondents. Including spouses or partners on the trip remains a priority for companies, with only 17% of respondents saying they do not invite a guest.
Group sizes for incentive programs have traditionally been small, and a majority (58%) of this year’s respondents reported an average of under 200 attendees. Just 15% of respondents plan programs for more than 500 attendees. The most popular trip length is five days, four nights (22%), followed by three days, two nights (21%). A small fraction of companies sponsor trips of 7 days or longer—just 12%.
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