Travel Truths for Business Events Corporate Incentive Travel

November 09, 2018

Seven trends identified in a new Corporate Incentive Travel study

The Melbourne Convention Bureau (MCB) partnered with PCMA Foundation to commission a research project to help APAC region meeting planners understand what is driving this expanding CIT market, which favours travel over financial incentives to motivate and reward high-performing staff, particularly Millennials. APAC’s business events sector is already valued at more than US$200 billion so researchers identified ways meeting planners could maximize CIT and develop new revenue models.

Nearly one-third of CIT planners said curating unexpected ‘WOW’ experiences including hands-on events tailored to professional and personal growth have become the industry standard.

This finding, along with six other emerging trends, was shared by Karen Bolinger, Melbourne Convention Bureau CEO, and Sherrif Karamat, PCMA president and CEO, on Nov. 9 at PCMA ICESAP Annual Conference 2018 in Bangkok.

Karen Bolinger said: “The Corporate Incentive Travel segment is proving to be a “quiet phenomenon” as it makes up over 25% of the global business travel industry and, in Australia alone, is growing at 20% year on year. It was obvious that this rapidly growing market would generate incredible insight and new business opportunities for incentive and meeting planners in Asia Pacific. We are thankful for PCMA’s support for our research and for the opportunity to first present the findings at its greatly attended Annual Conference for the region.”

View the report