It seems that the "AIG effect" is still influencing and affecting many of the decisions regarding corporate incentive travel programs. Companies have been extremely conservative regarding their spending decisions and holding back on corporate motivational trips for their employees. This resulted in many hotels and resorts seeing dramatic decreases in corporate bookings for this travel and contributing to the demise of many of these businesses.

The economy is still recovering and most hotels in bigger cities are slowly gaining bookings and recovering from the economic crisis. The resort hotels are still struggling and looking to the travel incentive business to hopefully recover enough to keep their businesses functioning.

The year 2010, according to The Convention and Visitors Bureau, is looking better and hotels and resorts are gaining a foothold again in the travel incentive market. This does not mean an immediate upswing in bookings from travel companies; but at least there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for this industry.

Challenges to Businesses

Most companies and corporations have realized the ongoing need for meetings and have begun to increase bookings to handle these meetings. These companies have also realized that the travel – and incentive travel – needs to be reflective of their own current economic status.

If their economic footing is a little shaky, then any event needs to be as scaled down as possible. An on-site team building or brainstorming session may be sufficient to generate solutions to the various challenges they are facing.

On the other hand, companies who have survived most of the economic downturn and maybe even done pretty well shouldn’t completely cancel all incentive travel programs for fear of an AIG-type backlash against such events. Each business should individually examine its own economic status and act, not re-act, to that status.

Challenges to the Hospitality Industry

The "AIG effect" has not entirely disappeared from the horizon. Those most greatly affected were the luxury resorts. Bankruptcies are still being filed, unfortunately. Perhaps the greatest challenge that the accommodations management businesses could be facing is the unknown. There are challenges over which no one has control, such as the large oil spill disaster that crippled the northern Gulf coast and affected nearly the entire Gulf coast summer season. The hospitality industry must attempt to ‘weather’ this current ‘storm’ of events and hopefully see better business times in the next year.

Updating the Hospitality Industry

The accommodations industry is considering new avenues of approach to make-up for the business lost to decreased corporate bookings. Meeting and leisure sites have been expanding their services toward new attractions for motivational travel that are more family friendly. In addition, these meeting and leisure sites are providing customers quality services and best value rooms during off-peak time to fill up the gap left by disappearing corporate travel incentives.

In spite of the challenges in the hospitality industry and the downturn caused by the "AIG effect" on sales incentive travel, your company can re-invent how to encourage employees with travel reward programs. Consider a sales motivational trip or retreat to work on a project that could give needed help back to a struggling community. Utilize the services of a highly qualified, experienced travel incentive company to efficiently handle any such travel. These companies will offer a better return for your corporate marketing dollar and help boost your sales revenues. Don’t give up on incentive sales travel and further damage the global economy. Let’s all work together and turn things around for both corporate economies and struggling communities.