Businesses are getting really creative in their marketing efforts during this economic hardship our nation is facing. It has been observed that retail clothing stores offer customers a 3-day, 2-night stay at a Las Vegas hotel to the first 100 customers that arrive at their store, with no purchase necessary. The same retailer also ran a second promotion where if a customer spent $100 in the store, he would upgrade his Las Vegas hotel stay with two round-trip airfare. Car dealers are advertising free 2-night hotel certificates in many tourist city destinations for customers who have just come for a test drive. When the customer purchases a vehicle, they upgrade their hotel stay to a 7-night cruise for two to the Bahamas or the Caribbean. Vacation certificate incentives can work for virtually every industry.
Real estate agents are using vacation certificates to attract more potential buyers to their open houses. Insurance agencies offer vacation certificates to customers if they call for a free quote. They then update customers who buy policies. With vacation certificate incentives, you can create highly effective employee recognition and loyalty programs, customer retention programs, referral programs, customer loyalty programs, lead generation programs, customer appreciation programs, etc. When a business uses incentives in conjunction with its existing advertising and marketing efforts, it can see a 30% increase in response rates to existing ads. Vacation incentives help businesses capture more paying customers from their existing marketing efforts and from repeat and referral business.
Vacation certificate incentive companies can be found by going to Google and entering the keywords vacation certificates or even vacation incentives. You will find hundreds of companies to choose from. All companies should be aware that 99% of these vacation certificate incentive companies work on a business model called “breakout”. Breakage works like insurance. Insurance companies charge you a monthly fee, hoping you never go to the doctor. These vacation certificate incentive companies do the same thing and charge you between $1.00 and $150.00 per certificate. They have no real contract with hotels, cruise ships, airlines, etc. but instead, you just earn commissions every time they book a client on a vacation at the standard published rate (the same rate you find on Expedia or Travelocity). So let’s say you buy 100 7-night cruise certificates at the going rate, which is around $30.00. You just paid $3000.00 to give 100 of your paying customers a vacation certificate. The travel agency takes $500 of the $3,000.00 and pays a commission to the sales representative. They then take $500 or more for their take and put $2000.00 into a reserve account to pay for the vacation when their clients try to redeem the vacation certificate. The problem is that $2000.00 won’t cover 100 7 night cruise getaways for two. They count on only a small percentage of their clients to redeem the vacation certificate just like an insurance company trusts that the insured will never go to the doctor. When they run out of money to pay for the vacation, they make excuses for their clients by telling them that the requested travel dates are not available and ask them to resubmit the dates over and over again only for their client to give up in the end, which can create unnecessary customer service problems for your business.
Can you imagine having to go out of your pocket to pay for all the vacations that your business promised because the travel agency to which you paid $3000.00 stops fulfilling the requests of your clients? Now, have you ever had satisfied customers speak negatively about your business, and what’s worse, it’s not even because of the product or service you’ve provided. What if it happens to the wrong customer? Can you imagine having to deal with a lawsuit because a client who loved your business 2 years ago wants the 7-night luxury cruise you promised?
Cruise ships, hotels, resorts and other travel establishments rarely accept full occupancy during major holidays and weekends. So what they do is they contract directly with certain incentive marketing companies that fill their empty rooms. When hotels, resorts, etc. Having empty rooms is basically a waste of a good room. They prefer someone to stay in the room for virtually free in the hopes of earning some revenue from their shops, restaurants, room service, spa, and if it’s in Vegas, their casino where they make all their money. Vacation certificate incentive companies that work with this model are hard to find, but they do exist.
