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What happens in Vancouver won’t stay in Vancouver when an anticipated 500 members of the incentive travel industry head to the SITE Global Conference, Jan. 24-27.
A group of senior leaders in the industry will meet the day before the proceedings start at the CEO Summit to begin drafting the Vancouver Manifesto, a document that will describe the nature, purpose and direction of incentive travel. The Vancouver Manifesto will be the subject of a white paper and several short videos in the future.
The document will be a follow-up to the earlier Bangkok Manifesto, a 10-point statement written at SITE’s Global Conference in Thailand in January 2019. The Bangkok Manifesto embraced values the industry stands for, such as social responsibility, the value of relationships and team building and an emerging definition of luxury in which “authentic, unique and personal experiences” will be more important than logos and brands. (Digital copies are available at motivate.siteglobal.com.)
Didier Scaillet, CITP, CIS, chief excellence officer for the Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE), says the manifesto is intended to be a living document.
“The industry is fluid, like the rest of the economy,” he says. “I don’t think the 10 statements will be completely different one year from now or three years from now, but the nuances behind each statement will probably change. I think the order of priorities will probably change, as well.”
The Vancouver Manifesto comes at a time when many leaders of major corporations are questioning the ethos that a CEO’s first priority should be shareholder profits, believing that this leads to a short-term focus that is harmful to society.
In August, the Business Roundtable, a group of senior corporate executives, released a statement saying that leaders should give their attention to societal issues that go beyond shareholder returns, such as worker wellbeing and giving back to the communities where they operate.
“It is a very dramatic statement,” says Padraic Gilligan, SITE chief marketing officer.
The incentive travel industry is sensitive to corporate concerns about social responsibility and has prioritized it, as well, Scaillet notes. Embracing social responsibility was the first priority listed in the Bangkok Manifesto.
“For those who have earned the right to go on incentive travel, I don’t think it’s their idea of an extraordinary travel experience to go and burn fossil fuel and go to a resort that could be anywhere using standardized products,” Scaillet says. “People want to know they are going to a place. They want to experience the local culture. They want to contribute to the sustainability of local farmers, not ship food from halfway across the world.”
One reflection of this is a move away from using plastics, such as straws. Marriott, for instance, recently announced it would no longer provide single-use containers of toiletries and instead provide larger, pump-top bottles.
“You have a broad group of people realizing we have to change the way we behave as citizens, consumers and travelers,” Scaillet says. “The idea of visiting a community and not just contributing to it in dollars but also being there to help the community with its needs is very prominent. It’s front and center with Millennials. For them, the opportunity to not waste the resources of the planet is essential. It needs to be incorporated into any incentive travel, any meeting that takes place. We want to drive that to the next level.”
Ultimately, the Vancouver Manifesto will provide a guide to the incentive travel industry for moving forward in today’s business environment, according to Jenn Glynn, SITE’s incoming president and managing partner of the meeting planning firm Meeting Encore.
“It helps guide where our priorities are as an industry,” she says.
The document will help SITE determine where to invest its dollars and direct its focus, according to Glynn, which may include relevant research and educational programs.
“These statements that have been crowdsourced by our members are also a valuable reference tool to be used to support their role in the industry,” she says.
For example, Glynn notes, they may be helpful in selling to a new client or educating a government agency on the value of the incentive industry.
The creation of the Vancouver Manifesto will be similar to that of the Bangkok Manifesto. The Bangkok Manifesto was drafted when SITE held its Global Conference in Thailand this past January. Before the conference, members of SITE’s international board of directors, trustees of the SITE Foundation and a group of global experts involved in incentive travel met in invitation-only workshops to write 40 statements about the nature, purpose and direction of incentive travel that would be considered for inclusion in the Bangkok Manifesto.
Through a crowdsourcing exercise and using the online audience engagement platform Slido, the collaborators pared the list down to 26 points at the conference, under the guidance of Martin Sirk, former executive director of the International Conference & Convention Association and now the owner of the strategic consultancy Sirk Serendipity in the Netherlands.
Ultimately, the 26 points were winnowed down to 10 through a voting process, with the assembly voting on the final 10 statements to show they represented a fair and accurate view of the incentive travel industry.
SITE later released a 40-page copy of the Bangkok Manifesto, distributing it from the booth of one of its contributors at IMEX Frankfurt in May 2019. SITE held a press conference to promote the publication and asked its members to share it with their employees, clients and stakeholders.
“We will continue to spread the word through utilization of the Manifesto to guide conversations with those within our industry, but also with a focus on spreading the word to those outside our industry and helping them understand that incentive travel drives business results, among other benefits,” Glynn says.
Included in the Bangkok Manifesto were essays by industry leaders.
Scott Graf, global president of BCD Meetings & Events, wrote about how relationships and teamwork—not isolated individual effort—build business results.
“Incentive travel experiences drive revenue and profitability, but also deliver another important dividend for the companies that use them: They create and strengthen relationships within the corporation and contribute significantly to the building of a positive company culture,” Graf wrote. “They have the power to inspire and change behavior by creating emotional connections that foster loyalty, engagement and lasting connections.”
Sebastian Tondeur, CEO of MCI Group, contributed his views on how incentive travel contributes significantly to economic growth, partnerships within and between organizations and innovative thinking by both participants and the organizations that create the programs as we see the rise of AI, robots, the internet of things and other technological changes.
“The winners in this truly global war for talent will create authentic engagement and transparency,” he wrote. “By bringing people from all around the world to many places all around the world, real people in real places will connect, grow and perform.”
As to the new definition of luxury, Bob Miller, CEO of One10, wrote about how it is a “state of mind existing when circumstances make people feel special”—and continues to evolve.
“The incentive travel industry is at the forefront of the changing perceptions of luxury,” Miller wrote. “Our clients still look for obvious comforts, but the focus is more about unique access to experiences—access their guests can’t buy or curate on their own. They want access to locations, activities and other people. They want to create those true, once-in-a-lifetime moments we all dream of. Technology fuels a desire for more experiences and people continue to share through social media. Whether it’s hiking on glaciers in Patagonia and then enjoying lunch with locals, a surprise flight to Cuba or passing a football with NFL greats on the beach, travel provides experiences to be shared.”
Work on the Manifesto will continue when SITE holds its 2021 global conference in Dublin.
“We will continue to use the Manifesto as a guide to where we really stand,” Scaillet says. “Is this still what represents us and the industry? Is this still what’s driving it?”
As Glynn puts it, “The Bangkok Manifesto was just the beginning. We now need to dig deeper into each of the statements and understand their full meaning and how SITE can help the industry and incentive travel professionals to be better equipped in their jobs.”
Many of the viewpoints that appear in the Bangkok Manifesto showed up in SITE’s most recent Incentive Travel Index, conducted with Oxford Economics.
“We’re seeing the same kind of concerns, themes and outcomes,” Gilligan says.
Many incentive travel professionals reflected the view in the survey that promoting profit was not the only reason for incentive travel.
“They see their role as trading in a commodity—time—and using a particular channel, which is travel,” Gilligan explains. “We’re really playing in a space where travel becomes transformative, allowing individuals to go outside of their comfort zone and have new and exciting experiences.”
