There are plenty of decent travel fulfillment partners out there for your meeting/event/group incentive travel needs. A travel fulfillment partner provides support and executes based on the specific instructions you provide. Those instructions might include the following: book 100 rooms for the nights of April 3 – 7, find a buffet menu for 200 people for $150 or less, book airport transportation for all attendees.
If you have an experienced internal events team, this travel fulfillment model might work well for your organization and be less expensive than hiring a more strategic group incentive travel partner. If not, you should really consider hiring a partner that’s going to strategically look at your requests and provide feedback/recommendations. Not only can a strategic partner help you run your program more smoothly, but you can also gain productivity as well. For example, a strategic partner might respond to the same instructions with the following questions:
- Book 100 rooms for the nights of April 3 – 7
- We checked with the hotels that met your criteria and the nightly rate is $20 less if you do April 2 – 6.
- There’s a city-wide convention over those dates, so flights may be limited /more expensive.
- How many suites and how many staff rooms do you need?
- Do you want to book any pre/post extension rooms?
- Find a buffet menu for 200 people for $150 or less
- At this hotel, plated menus are actually less expensive. Is that an option?
- Does that $150 need to include a reception with hors d’oeuvres and cocktails?
- Book airport transportation for all attendees
- It would be less expensive to do a shuttle to the airport on the group departure day – departing every hour. Would you consider that?
- Do you want porterage available for attendees at the airport?
- Do you want bottled water and/or cold towels in the vehicles?
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If you’re paying for travel fulfillment support, you might be better off getting the experienced and strategic insight of the vendor providing those services. You can often times get a lot more out of a strategic partner without much of a price difference.
It might be hard to figure out in a Request For Proposal (RFP) situation which company will be more of a travel fulfillment partner vs strategic partner. Some things to look for:
- Do they ask a lot of questions? Asking questions means they want to really understand what you’re trying to do.
- Do they provide advice/recommendations in the RFP stage? A strategic partner shouldn’t be afraid to provide free advice – even if they aren’t sure of winning the business.
So, are you working with a travel fulfillment partner or a strategic partner? It might be time to ask yourself (and your vendor!) that question. Take a look at our Group Incentive Travel Guide to see how trips like these can be set up.
Sources:
https://theirf.org/research/7-incentive-travel-stats-everyone-should-know/1386/
