Everyone loves a cruise, and a cruise meeting incentive is a great way to inspire excitement and energy, and motivate employees.  There are many cruise lines, ships and destinations from which to choose.  One easy way to source a group cruise incentive event is Seasite.com.  You can create a single RFP, and plan your group cruise entirely online.

The Carnival Fantasy sails in to her new home – Charleston, South Carolina.

Merit raises, employee appreciation gifts and awards, and incentive travel are effective ways to build employee morale and company pride. Aside from these obvious choices, the importance of day-to-day morale boosters cannot be overstated. While it is important to provide memorable, enticing incentives that will encourage employees to reach sales goals and improve their performance, it is also important to make sure they feel appreciated, trusted and respected on a daily basis.

Improving employee morale on a daily basis through showing them respect and making them feel appreciated is much simpler than it may seem. Little things like ensuring that each employee is given equal time and recognition during meetings, making sure they know you are aware of and appreciate the long hours they are spending on a project and not looking over their shoulder every second of the workday go a long way towards showing them that they are trusted and appreciated, resulting in improved morale and productivity.

Another simple way to boost morale and productivity is to provide both small and large incentives. For example, an annual incentive cruise for top salespeople should be supplemented with smaller competitions or incentives, such as gift cards or personalized items they can use at work that can be given out for making weekly or monthly sales goals.

It is no secret that not every staff loves team building exercises, events and travel. Once they have attended the same old team building workshops or participated in their twentieth trust exercise, some folks will understandably balk at the announcement that yet another team building experience has been added to the calendar. It is up to the person planning the team building or incentive experience to find new, enticing ideas that will appeal to employees and get them excited about the upcoming event.

This is actually much simpler than it may sound, particularly once you begin to explore the wide variety of options now available for incentive and award programs, corporate entertainment events and team building opportunities. Stock car tracks and racing schools are a prime example of just how exciting incentives and team building can be, and are a fun option that can be customized to fit your needs. Whether you are looking for a half-day event or a multiple-day program, taking your team to the track is sure to provide them with an exciting new experience with opportunities for everyone to participate.

Stock car racing schools offer ride-along programs for folks who may not be ready to get behind the wheel, classes to teach your team how to drive race cars and pit crew activities that offer a whole new take on team building.

The best incentive programs to motivate employees include rewards of money or travel.  People love to win trips to destinations that are different from their own environment.  Trips to exotic destinations such as an incentive cruise to  interesting ports of call are among the most popular incentives, and tend to have the best ROI overall. 

Seasite.com, the first online group cruise meeting planning portal, allows planners capitalize on the value of cruise meeting and incentives. Cruising can cut the cost of land based venues by as much as 25-40%, allowing planners to persevere with today’s shrinking budgets. Why not make your next corporate incentive event a meeting-at-sea ? Take a look at Seasite.com today!

Successful incentive programs will not only increase company profits but can also raise morale and inspire employee loyalty. Your ideal incentive program should include both of the following features:

• Empowering people to do the thing you enjoy doing
• Recognition – in all its various forms

Recognition of a well-done job creates greater autonomy, increases visibility within your organization, and showcases success.

"There are two things people want more than sex and money… recognition and praise." – Mary Kay Ash, Founder, Mary Kay Cosmetics

"People want to feel what they do makes a difference." – Frances Hesselbein, President, The Drucker Foundation

Top recognition incentive programs to motivate staff include rewards of money or travel.  People love to travel to destinations that are different from their own environment.  Trips to exotic destinations such as Hawaii or an incentive cruise to interesting ports of call are among the most popular incentives.  

Hawaii is one of the most desirable meeting and incentive destinations.  It is a place that inspires your attendees, and  one that people everywhere in the world dream to visit.  Participation in Hawaii incentive events generally exceeds expectations, so Hawaiian incentives can be relied on to deliver on ROI.  This is true especially in tough economic times.

The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB), offers meeting and incentive planners "one stop shopping" to plan a meeting in Hawaii.  They have the resources, knowledge, and connections to maximize the value of a business meeting experience for planners and their clients. They recently launched an exciting new online initiative called the Added Value Resource Center at BusinessAloha.com.  Planners can go to the site and take advantage of several innovative programs to help them save money, without sacrificing the quality of the overall Hawaii meeting experience.

It has a been a tough year and although the economy has stabilized a bit and there are signs of recovery, many companies are cautious when it comes to incentives. You may be torn between an honest desire to reward and inspire your employees and yet be acutely aware of public scrutiny.

Day trips might just bridge the gap. Look close to home for inspiration. Is there an area nearby for white water rafting? The struggle to keep afloat on a vigorously churning river has a good many parallels to the corporate world. People form tight bonds when they struggle toward a common goal and sharing a fabulous meal afterwards doesn’t hurt either.

The goal of the trip is to inspire employees and reward them for a job well done. A trip to the Bahamas would be terrific but if a day trip to a vineyard or spa is more in the budget do not hesitate. Moreover, don’t be afraid to ask your team for suggestions. They may surprise you with some creative and affordable ways to spend a day. Perhaps a jazz festival would be better for your top salesperson than a fly-fishing expedition. Great tickets to the next home team game could work just as well as a day of pampering at a nearby spa.

Everyone needs rewards as well as a salary, especially in hard times. Celebrate for life is good!

Your client has noticed that public opinion regarding incentives is not good. She is worried that her company will be seen as wasteful and she will be seen as a spendthrift. In some companies that assessment may be accurate, but in some cases it may be way off. If you have a client who is worried for no good reason, perhaps you can convince her that canceling the program isn’t only not necessary, it can be detrimental to the business’s bottom line.

One reason is that the employee may have been expecting it, and perhaps working with a goal like that in mind. Bob may have noticed that last year Joe got a trip to New Zealand for being the top producing sales person, and he just broke Joe’s sales record. If Bob doesn’t get an incentive gift, he’s not only going to ask, “Why bother?” but he may also end up working for the competition.

Another reason is because others are watching. If Bob and Joe are retail partners and the same thing happens, other retail partners will see that and also ask, “Why bother?” Driving sales down is a negative return on investment, and sales is the only thing that makes money.

So the real reason not to cancel is because the top ROI a client can get on a canceled trip is zero. Zip, zilch, nada. That’s if she’s lucky. If she’s not, she will have a possible attrition of good sales people, or less participation from retail partners, and general malaise of employee attitude.

While we usually think of incentive programs benefiting the top producers–and the incentive itself does–the real effect is on the average employee, according to Fay Beauchine. In May 2009’s Incentive Magazine, she made the point in Incentive House Roundtable that it’s the middle producers who move up.

“We all know top performers are usually top performers,” she said to interviewer Leo Jakobson. She claimed that it’s the middle that improve by trying to hit the target. Even though they will miss it, they will still improve, even if only a few percent, and that will increase the total sales by “huge numbers in some cases.”

This underscores the importance of the incentive travel programs currently in place in corporations today. You as the meeting planner need to understand that you are a key player in your client’s bottom line, and you have to produce sales in an indirect way. This can be more difficult than the motivation speaker who simply gives them all a good talking to.

Remember that when you plan incentive travel, you need to plan with the person in mind. Tailor it to fit a participant’s ideal needs and wants and she will talk about it for a long time–and she will say it to some of the middle producers in the company.

If you have the position of coming up with incentive ideas, one thing to keep in mind is that many people are being more concerned about the environmental impact of travel. This is especially true of younger employees who earn rewards from their companies. Here are some travel ideas that may help you present the best possible package.

Eco-Conscious Regions

First, travel to eco-conscious regions is always a plus. Costa Rice is a big favorite. It has more variety in its indigenous life than any other place on earth of the same size. It is also proud of its eco-conscious image: its motto is “No Artificial Ingredients.” How can you go wrong?

You can go wrong with places like that by providing unfriendly travel. Make sure the you present your client with travel and accommodation options with the smallest impact on the area.

Even though you can rent cars in Costa Rica, find top-notch resorts and restaurants, you might give another option to you client’s employee. Offer the option of having all portions of the trip be eco-friendly (even though it cannot, admittedly, be zero impact) and all the food options be low impact.

Once you have a good idea for a destination, contact their tourist board to find the best options for the best prices. If you have a meeting planner buddy in that country, contact her as well for the inside scoop.

All of this may take you a little longer than usual, but you make a big splash with the client and help ensure a good ROI.