Wayne Harris will never forget the look on the faces of the incentive tour group he'd taken to Surfers' Paradise when 100 bikers on Harley Davidsons roared up.
"We had told them only we were going on a bit of an orientation of the town," says Harris, general manager of Go Conference & Incentive. "We were pretending the bus was a bit late - and then the Harleys turned up."
The orientation was done in the thunder of the head-turning motorcycle cavalcade; another entry made in the incentive planner's handbook under the heading of "Unforgettable Experiences".
It's the mantra of the planner - give the clients something they can't replicate themselves: "It doesn't matter how much money they [the incentive group] might have in their wallets - you must give them an experience they can't buy," says Eugene de Villiers, managing director of the aptly named Extra Mile Company. "It doesn't matter how good their travel agent is; you give them something they'd never be able to get for themselves."
Surfers Paradise is not exactly unknown to Kiwis but Surfers on a Harley Davidson is something the tour group talked about for ages afterwards. Harris also credits Australia as the site of "the best dinner I have ever held anywhere in the world".
It was at Ayers Rock (Uluru) with the incentive group ferried out into a powerfully clear night in the desert, where the only other sign of life had been wallabies and kangaroos.
The mysticism meter ran high as the travellers sat at the foot of the giant rock, immersed in a world of lanterns, white tablecloths, silver service cutlery and crockery, world-class food and wine. At the end of the dinner, a speaker encouraged the guests to lie back in their chairs and look at the stars as he explained the constellations, their meanings and significance.
"It was a fantastic experience - humbling and touching and mystical," says Harris. "That's what we want - to take you somewhere where you are touched like that."
If all of this is sounding like a never-ending tale of travellers having a jolly good jolly, there is a firm business rationale behind it.
Incentives, usually travel, are used to reward loyal and/or big clients and high-performing staff, most often salespeople. They are a powerful motivator for performance and retention of clients and de Villiers, also a member of the board of the global Incentive Research Foundation (IRF), says it has a proven effect on the performance of the businesses involved.
IRF research showed organisations providing incentives had an average annual year-on-year revenue increase of nearly 10 per cent in 2013 - compared to the average 3 per cent growth of those companies who did not undertake incentives.
The figures are from the world's biggest incentive market - the US - but de Villiers says the effects are universal. The best performing companies in the US all use incentive travel and there are other figures showing consistent sales increases by client companies after such events, with productivity increasing on average by 18 per cent and 55 per cent of staff staying with the companies hosting the incentives significantly longer than their peers.
De Villiers, like Harris a fan of Australia as an incentive destination, says the key is Australia's ability to provide the unable-to-be-duplicated experiences the planners want.
"There's the Hunter Valley, there's Margaret River, central Australia is a blank canvas with many possibilities, there's the Ghan train (Adelaide-Darwin) which most Kiwis have never experienced, everyone has been to Perth but few have ever been to Broome, or way up north or far north Queensland."
Harris says: "It's close, the air fares are good because it's a competitive route, they have good hotels, their attention to detail is great, the food and wine is good (and Kiwis care about that) and they deliver - I knew those 100 Harley riders would be there and on time."
De Villiers says the incentives market is changing and becoming more involving; it used to be mainly sales staff but companies who realise incentives add to their business bottom line are including more from within.
"We now run a lot of engagement programmes as well - and they can cover non-sales staff. It might be someone who the company feels embodies the virtues of their corporate values which are on a plaque in the boardroom but otherwise little-regarded. It might be the person in the telephone room dealing with an irate customer and solving the problem.
"We are seeing a lot more of that these days - and it has a positive effect on the businesses involved.
For more information click here