Traveling Incentive Style

Incentive: Travel

Traveling Incentive Style
December 02, 2008
If you're going to go, go in style—meaning utilizing comfortable transportation throughout the trip

By Margery Weinstein

As a journalist, I'm not used to traveling in style. Unless by "style," you mean a super-prime seat in ultra-luxurious coach, with a connection or two, and a sleepless red-eye flight thrown in about once a year for good measure.

So my latest journeys on behalf of Incentive magazine have been a revelation, and a relief. In our recessionary times, I expected to find travel no more indulgent than my usual "style," and I had a fear that despite still sending workers on incentive trips as rewards for superior performance, companies were cutting back by cutting out the first class tickets. Well, I have to tell you, I hope it doesn't come to that—no matter how financially life and death business gets. What's an incentive trip, after all, if the journey to the destination is full of misery and woe?

Since misery and woe wasn't what you were aiming for, I'd like to persuade you of the importance of comfortable transportation—as an integral part of every incentive trip.

I'll start with my Oct. 15-23 trip to Britain. At first the scenario looked bleak. My press trip’s gracious organizers, Visit London and VisitBritain, informed me that I was booked on British Airways' World Traveler Plus (fancy economy essentially) on the way there and just plain World Traveler on the way home, but that they had put me on the list for an upgrade.

Accustomed, as all us peasants are, to over-booked flights, I held little hope of an upgrade. My negative attitude usually helps keep disappointment at bay on my travels, but this time it wasn't necessary—I was upgraded both ways to the airline's flat bed business class section. Given that my flight there was a red-eye with a (very) full next day planned in London, I was much better off than I would have been in an economy class seat (no matter how much better they are than our paltry U.S. airline coach accommodations). In addition to the novelty of being able to lie down (especially critical given that I still haven't mastered the art of sleeping sitting up), I savored the warm chocolate chip cookies and whip cream-topped hot chocolate at bedtime. I could have opted for a more serious, adult meal of some kind of fancy salad-or-other, but thought the childish menu route more soothing. "Breakfast in Bed" the next morning got me off to a good start. I was still grumpy from spending the night in an airplane, but as I said, infinitely better than I would have been in more measly circumstances…

Editor's Note: Read more about our editor's trip at The Daily Perk, Incentive's blog, or visit Incentivemag.com to read her in depth accounts of her recent travels to England and Australia.

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