incentive travel for teams of 10 to 75, run by one person from start to finish

Almost certainly not. If you have 10 or more people, incentive travel is available to you, and it often lands harder at your size than at a big company -- at 40 people, the trip is something the whole company experiences together, not a reward a handful of strangers in another region happen to win.

What changes with size isn't whether you can do it. It's the shape. A 15-person program usually means one property, one shared experience, and a simpler build. A 60-person program means room blocks, tiered activities, and more coordination. Both are real incentive programs. Neither is a scaled-down version of the other.

The companies I hear this from most are the ones already doing a version of it: the annual dinner that keeps getting bigger, the president's club with nowhere to go. If that sounds like you, you're not too small. You're already doing it, just without the trip.

Here's a real example. A recent 6-day, 5-night program at an adults-only all-inclusive in Cancún, Mexico, ran $3,000 to $5,000 per person. That covered flights, accommodations, private round-trip airport transfers, activities, and spa services, all paid by the company. Your number depends on the destination, the season, the length of the trip, and what you choose to include. You get an itemized budget before you commit to anything.

My incentive program fee starts at $7,500. That's my fee for designing and managing the program from beginning to end. It's separate from the trip cost itself: what you spend on hotels, flights, activities and meals for the group.

Enough to approve the program without chasing me for it.

Before you commit: an itemized proposal. Accommodations, activities, dining, ground transportation, and my fee, itemized. Not one number with everything folded into it. Your finance team can see what they're approving and where every part of it goes.

At contracting: a written agreement, plus the supplier terms in full. Scope, payment schedule, cancellation and attrition. Attrition is what happens if you block 40 rooms and fill 34, and it's worth understanding early: those terms are set by the hotel or the destination management company, not by me. My job is to get them in front of you in writing before you sign and to negotiate them where there's room -- not to let you discover them later.

Through the program: a payment schedule with dates. Nothing arrives as a surprise.

After the trip: the final numbers. You set the budget at the start; I work with the suppliers to meet it. When the program is over, I close the loop and present final numbers -- what was budgeted, what was actually spent, and any differences between the two. Most finance teams want to see that before they'll approve doing it again next year and most of my clients are already thinking about next year by the time they're home.

I spent twenty years running events in higher education -- at MIT, Columbia, and Arizona State -- before I started designing travel. Documentation a finance team can actually approve isn't an add-on to that work. It's how the work gets done.

They're three different things and they're not really competing for the same job.

A DMC (destination management company) works one destination, deeply. They're the on-the-ground operator -- transport, venues, local guides, the things that only make sense if you live there. What a DMC doesn't do is help you choose the destination in the first place, or manage your program in the months before you arrive. I contract DMCs on behalf of my clients and I'm your advocate in that relationship: I hold them to what was promised, so you're not negotiating with a vendor in another country. They're a partner in your program, not an alternative to having one.

An incentive house is usually not a travel company first. Firms like Maritz, BI Worldwide, and ITA Group are employee-engagement and performance-management companies -- the trip is one output, alongside the platform that tracks who qualified, the recognition program, and the sales-incentive design behind it. If you're running that whole apparatus, they're built for it. If what you need is the trip, you're buying a system around it that you may not use.

An independent planner -- what I do -- is one person who owns your program end to end: destination selection, sourcing, contracting, room blocks, attendee management, and on-site coordination. You get the same person on the phone in month one and on the ground during the program. Behind me are Virtuoso and Andavo Travel, which is where the buying power, the hotel relationships, and the negotiated perks come from -- so the network is large even though your point of contact is one person.

For 10 to 75 people, that combination is usually the right fit: enterprise-grade process without an account queue. Below 10, none of the three is really the answer -- that's a group dinner or an experience day.

Ideally 9 to 12 months before the trip date. This gives us the best selection of hotels and rates, especially for popular destinations during peak season. I've planned trips on shorter timelines, but more lead time means better options and better pricing. A rush supplement applies to my program fee for later starts: 25% when the trip is within six months, and 50% within three months.

Yes, and many companies encourage it -- it makes the reward feel more personal. I build the program to handle plus-ones with shared rooms, couples activities, and flexible scheduling.

It depends on your group, your budget, and the time of year. Popular choices include Mexico (Cabo, Cancún, Riviera Maya), the Caribbean (Turks and Caicos, Anguilla, Aruba), Hawai'i, Costa Rica, Portugal, and Italy. I recommend destinations based on your specific program -- not just what's trendy.

I can help you design the qualification criteria and write the announcement. Tracking your team's actual performance stays on your side -- that's your data.

That's some of my favorite work. First-time programs have the most visible impact on a team, and I'll walk you through the whole process.