Family Friendly Incentive Travel: Mark Herbert Featured in Insurance & Financial Meetings Management

These days more and more insurance and financial companies are opening up their incentive travel rewards to the whole family. Structuring a family friendly incentive travel experience, one which includes the participants’ spouses and children, makes incentive travel more accessible, enjoyable, and effective. In a recent article, Insurance & Financial Meetings Management asked Incentive Solutions’ President and CEO Mark Herbert to share his expertise in creating family-friendly incentive travel events.

When asked about the benefits of family-friendly incentive travel, Herbert says: “Family-friendly meetings can boost attendance as attendees may be more inclined to participate if they can also spend time with their families during their downtime. This is especially important if you are marketing your meeting to outside audiences like customers who may not want to spend more time away from their families. This is a golden opportunity to mix business with some family time. Not to mention, you are now creating a loyalty to your business amongst the whole family. It’s a great way to extend brand awareness.”

5 Tips for Family-Friendly Incentive Travel

In the article, Mark Herbert offers insurance and financial companies five tips to make incentive travel fun and accessible for the whole family.

1. Choose a central location that includes plenty of family-friendly activities: Make attending the event as convenient for your participants as possible. If budget is a concern, Herbert recommends hosting the event within driving distance of your participants. And make sure your destination presents a great value proposition for kids and adults, alike.
2. Schedule your incentive travel event for when school’s out: If you want to open up your incentive travel event to the children of your participants, make sure to schedule your event during summer or one of the longer holidays when school isn’t a concern.
3. Plan kid-friendly events during times when adults will be involved in more formal or business-related events: Let’s face it: kids might not have a great time in a business meeting or at a formal, adult-only event. During those times make sure to provide supervised childcare in a fun space that includes games, movies, or other activities kids can enjoy. That way, both parents and kids are free to have fun!
4. Include goodies for the kids: Many incentive travel events have premium giveaways. For a family-friendly incentive travel event, make sure the kids don’t leave empty-handed. “Matching sunglasses, sandals, custom-designed Nikes, etc., are all good options,” says Mark Herbert.
5. Consider all-inclusive resorts: When your participants bring their family on an incentive travel trip, the last thing they want to worry about is consumption-costs. All-inclusive destinations render this a non-issue. Plus, many all-inclusive resorts have swimming pools and are often located near a beach, which are great places for participants to spend time with their family.

Watching It All Come Together

Later in the article, Mark Herbert talks about one of his all-time favorite family-friendly events, which Incentive Solutions hosted for one of our clients in Orlando:

“From the start, we focused on including the children, really setting the mood for a family-friendly event. We included goody bags for the entire family, and had Maui Jim come out and do onsite sunglasses for the entire family, with fittings right on location. We hosted a family fun evening one night at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror courtyard. Our final shebang was at the hotel. Kids were dropped off for a night under the stars, with childcare, dinner, a dessert bar, and plenty of fun movies, while the parents headed to their own version of a night under the stars, full of great food, a little dancing, and live entertainment.”

Notice how Incentive Solutions made use of all of the tips we mentioned earlier to provide an unforgettable, family-friendly incentive travel experience?

Interested in Creating a Family Friendly Incentive Travel Trip?

If you need help planning your next incentive travel trip and exploring ways to make the trip fun for the whole family, we encourage you to check out our new incentive travel page and give us a call at (866) 567-7432!

Signing off,

Luke Kreitner

VP of Sales
Incentive Solutions