Those who are familiar with the travel industry would have heard of the acronym M.I.C.E.\u00a0 It stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fast-growing speciality within Travel and has been the result of a growing need of large corporations to take their staff to exotic destinations for a meeting, incentive tour, conference or exhibition.\u00a0 Of particular interest to me is the Incentive Tour component.<\/p>\n
You see, a healthy chunk of my job involves designing and managing Reward and Recognition programs for an Insurance major in India.\u00a0 And a large part of the R&R portfolio is made up of managing Incentive Tours for the sales staff (and select partners and distributors) at locations all over the world.\u00a0 Now, I have never been regarded as an expert in Travel Management.\u00a0 I have never even been on a tour as a part of a large group, preferring to take my holidays with close family or friends.\u00a0 But, I love a challenge that takes some doing.\u00a0 And this was one such bargain.<\/p>\n
The group comprised 100 people, and there were a million details to attend to.\u00a0 The final list to be announced, passports and visa forms to be collected, meal preferences, table seating, rooming lists, trophies to be made for each with his\/her name embossed on it\u2026 Hotels had to be chosen, itineraries had to be planned, Gala Night to be orchestrated\u2026 performance artistes, MC, local souvenirs, guides who know what to do and where to go\u2026 And that\u2019s not all.\u00a0 The entire tour had to be an \u201cexperience\u201d.\u00a0 After all, it shouldn\u2019t just be another holiday, should it?\u00a0 So, every possible avenue of branding had to be utilised to the fullest – Welcome banners, danglers in the bus, giveaways with our logo on it, etc. etc. etc.<\/p>\n
For more than 2 months, my team and I have been sweating it out, attending to the minutiae and planning for every eventuality.\u00a0 Last night, when the flight from Bangkok touched down at Mumbai International Airport, it finally came to an end.\u00a0 And it was a resounding success!<\/p>\n
Sure, there were some minor setbacks, but which tour doesn\u2019t have those? The feedback on the whole was very positive.\u00a0 Thanks to a very able assistant (Farhan) and the services of the professional and helpful staff of the Hard Rock Hotel (Pattaya), I was able to successfully take a group of 100 to Thailand and ensure that all of them had the time of their lives during the 3 nights and 4 days we spent there. Rest assured, I could count on joining the MICE team of any travel firm in the country, if ever the need arose.<\/p>\n
For now, though, it\u2019s back to work as usual.\u00a0 As my boss said : Take the Sat, Sun off.\u00a0 You\u2019ve earned it.\u00a0 See you in office on Monday!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Those who are familiar with the travel industry would have heard of the acronym M.I.C.E. It stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions. It’s a fast-growing speciality within Travel and has been the result of a growing need of large corporations to take their staff to exotic destinations for a meeting, incentive tour, conference or exhibition. Of particular interest to me is the Incentive Tour component…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-travel"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3569,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/3569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}