Paul Evans, director of Treatme, provides an overview of the “experiences” market and its opportunities for growth for motivation and promotions
Experiences are becoming the most exciting and flexible choice, working with corporate clients to offer them tailored business solutions when they are looking at ways of motivating and rewarding staff. Experiences are easier for businesses to relate rewards directly to achievements. It’s an incredibly powerful way to reward, thank or motivate staff and customers.
All experience companies are enjoying year-on-year growth the same if not more than retail gift vouchers. At Teatme.net, we have enjoyed an increase of 20 per cent.
But where do experiences fit in with rewards, recognition, loyalty, incentives, motivation and the voluntary benefit markets? The practice of rewarding not just sales people, but also administration and support staff has boosted growth in the experience industry. The UK voucher market is valued at £3.2 billion, according to figures collated by the VA, the trade association representing the UK corporate and consumer voucher market, and this includes figures submitted by experience companies such as Treatme.net, Buyagift, Virgin Experience Days and Exhilaration.
The strong growth shown by the UK corporate market represents the increasing importance of loyalty and motivation schemes to UK industry. When people receive an experience as a reward at work, it is a powerful motivational tool, better than money – although vouchers also continue to be the most popular reward for incentives and promotions throughout the UK because of their flexibility. Experience gift vouchers also offer the combination of convenience and versatility and are incredibly easy to make the right choice when targeting a wide diverse audience.
Experiences are being used by many companies, in a variety of ways. These include loyalty schemes, points-based reward schemes, staff incentives, incentive promotion, long service, prize draws, sales promotion, motivation and recognition, developing customer databases and building trade relationships.
As part of a bonus or incentive scheme, experiences make it so much easier to relate rewards directly to achievements. They can be used to buy expensive luxury experiences such as driving a Ferrari or the everyday experience of a health and spa day. It’s an incredibly powerful way to reward, thank or motivate your staff and customers thanks to the assortment of redeemers on offer.
Experiences can play a key part in motivating and rewarding employees and they can offer real business solutions. But when motivating staff, should a smaller incentive be easily available to all, or is a more prestigious gift that is harder to earn a greater motivator? Different types of people will be attracted to different incentives and, due to the wide choice of products that they offer, experiences can be tailored to suit any target audience. Enquiries are on the increase from HR managers looking for experiences for rewards and voluntary benefits. Furthermore, high on their agendas are team building and corporate events, with driving days becoming the most popular.
In the same way that vouchers are an excellent way to repay staff loyalty or form part of an incentives package, so are experiences. They too can also be a good way to drive customer loyalty. Customers feel appreciated because their loyalty is being rewarded.
Many retailers today offer vouchers as part of their customer loyalty schemes, including offering vouchers as a benefit to store card users and matching offers and vouchers to the buying habits of individual shoppers. This is also true of experiences which now compete in this market.
Last year saw the launch of gift card centres in the UK, and this helped raise awareness to the consumer of the use of gift cards as an alternative way to gift, especially at Christmas. However, how popular have the experiences cards been compared to retail cards such as Debenhams, Arcadia and Next? There are now offers from Red Letter Days, Experience Days, Gift Days Out, SpaFinder, Ticketmaster, Virgin Experience Days, Activity Superstore, SpaSeeker, Buyagift, Extreme Element, The Wave, Legoland, Nationwide Paintball and Sealife Centres – and that’s just off the top of my head!
With all these existing gift cards in the market, is there confusion for the customers and indeed the recipient and is there a place in the centres for another experience card…?
For experiences, I believe the major growth area is in the corporate market, with more sales promotion and marketing agencies looking for tangible products to give to their clients and more employers looking for high-value experiences to give their employees the “experience of a lifetime”.