If you’re a latecomer to our Emerging Incentive Travel Destination series, here’s the scoop: every month, we’ve been dedicating a blog post to places all over the world that can provide unique incentive travel experiences. Popular, well-known places like The Bahamas and Panama Beach attract a lot of corporate and incentive travel, but our event planning and group travel connections have led us to some more interesting corners of the world. If you want to offer your incentive program participants or corporate event attendees travel opportunities that no other company has thought of, look no further than this blog series!

This month, we’re discussing one of Central America’s ignored treasures: Nicaragua.

Nicaragua’s natural beauty is utopian and its Caribbean weather is heavenly. The country is home to the largest expanse of rainforest north of the Amazon and its tropical climate averages 87°F year round. Its nature reserves are large, its majestic volcanic peaks are numerous, and its colonial cities are lively with local culture. In the last several years, Nicaragua has taken drastic measures to bolster development and encourage safe, open trading. In fact, publications like The Economist and Business Insider have called it one of the safest countries in Central America in recent years. Nicaragua’s emerging image is that of a “New Costa Rica,” similar in culture and climate, but more affordable and yet to be overrun by tourism.

A group travel trip to Nicaragua is easy to coordinate and guaranteed to delight attendees when considering its advantages:

Easy on the Eyes and the Incentive Reward Budget

The major advantage of group travel to Nicaragua is cost. Due to the current lack of tourism in the country, transportation and the cost of goods are both inexpensive. Nicaragua has all the exotic natural wonder of other Central American getaways—volcanoes; acres of uninhabited rainforests; cool, misty cloudforests in the tropical canopies; plantations; monkeys wandering freely through villages. Nicaragua has no shortage of pristine beaches, vibrant coral reefs, and exotic species like the tapir and the colorful, resplendent quetzal bird. You can treat your incentive trip attendees to an excursion that’s just as breathtaking as the Caribbean, but is a lot nicer to your incentive reward budget.

Plenty of Team Building Group Activities

There are enough activities in Nicaragua, from thrilling to soothing, to suit every incentive travel or corporate event attendee. Surfing, fishing, snorkeling, diving, and volcano sandboarding are just a few exciting ways to spend time with colleagues in this beautiful country. If you bring your group to relax, you can kick back in a quiet fishing village. If you’re more interested in adventurous group activities, you can explore the reefs’ underwater life or experience Nicaragua’s diverse ecosystems, from mountains and volcanoes to savanna-esque coastal plains. Surf and sail across Nicaragua’s Pearl Keys, a chain of beautiful, white-sand islands in the sparkling, turquoise Caribbean Sea.

An Incentive Trip that’s Overseas but not Over-Exhausting

The main tenets of Nicaragua’s convenience for U.S. travelers are distance, language, and currency conversion.

• The distance from Miami to Nicaragua’s Managua International Airport is only 1,000 miles, with direct flights from Atlanta, Houston, and Ft. Lauderdale also available.
• Spanish is the official language, but English is widely spoken on the Caribbean coast, which reduces language barriers.
• Nicaraguan currency is the córdoba, which is roughly 27 to 1 USD, making the dollar quite strong there.

Planning corporate events and group travel can be difficult, with tastes and preferences in every group bound to conflict. It can also be a challenge to select a destination that’s different and exciting to a diverse group of people. Very few countries can impress travel attendees the way Nicaragua can, with its natural, untainted beauty and new wonders to discover around every corner. Combine the opportunity to explore a new place with convenient locale and currency conversion, and Nicaragua makes a perfect, one-of-a-kind group travel destination.