David Peckinpaugh, CMP, CIS

President

Maritz Global Events

We are encouraged to see that recognizing and rewarding individuals during the global pandemic is still top of mind for many companies. Understanding the impact and restrictions on group incentives, companies have opted to focus on individual incentives rather than simply doing without this year. We are seeing somewhat of a boom in individual incentives being designed and delivered with creativity. Some firms are considering options such as prepackaging trips from which qualifiers may choose, setting aside funds for qualifiers to use at their discretion on site, and allowing deferment to pre- or post-trip experiences in the future. While individual incentives are the most active right now, we are beginning to see some group incentives coming back. We’re finding this particularly in the pharma and financial-services sectors, though among some others as well. As we work with our group-incentive clients who are focused on driving business results and reinvigorating culture, group incentives are still front and center, and there appears to be pent-up demand for it to come back. We anticipate group incentives to start coming back in the first half of 2021, with recovery more strongly focused on the second half of 2021.