Mastering the Art of Incentives: An Exclusive Interview with Spanish Heritage
With just 1 month to go until we bring inVOYAGE to the cosmopolitan city of Madrid, we catch up with our friends and colleagues at Spanish Heritage for an exclusive interview of just what goes into creating an award-winning incentive…
inVOYAGE is headed to Madrid! Join the inVOYAGE retreat as we take 200 of the top luxury brands to Rosewood Villa Magna, to network under one roof in a truly spectacular, luxury incentive showcase.
Yulia Lekomtseva
Brand Ambassador, Marketing & Sales, Spanish Heritage
inVOYAGE: We loved partnering with you at last year’s inVOYAGE event in Marbella and are delighted to be working with you once again for our much-anticipated event this March in Madrid! But what about some of the other events you’ve helped organise. Can you share with us an example of one of the most unique and memorable incentives you’ve helped to design here in Madrid?
Yulia Lekomtseva: First of all, we enjoyed SO much creating inVoyage Marbella together with the inVoayge team and we are honoured to be partnering with you again and excited to showcase Madrid as a luxury incentive destination! We have lots of surprises in store…
Madrid has become an acclaimed luxury travel destination in the past few years and, of course, we were lucky enough to handle several incentive programmes in the city since. The one that comes to my mind as the most remarkable one is probably one of the biggest incentive trips that was ever done by a North American client outside the US: almost 2,000 people! The programme, that Spanish Heritage was 100% in charge of, involved buy-out´s of 3 luxury properties in Madrid, in-destination activities and themed evenings, one of them featuring an international pop star!
inVOYAGE: Sounds incredible! With that in mind, what elements do you believe are crucial for creating a successful and memorable incentive experience? And how do you collaborate with event professionals to tailor incentive programs that truly inspire and motivate participants to achieve their best?
Yulia Lekomtseva: Know your audience… it is crucial for us as a DMC to understand exactly WHO we are creating the incentive program for. We are very used to working very closely with our clients creating a personalized experience for the group, piece by piece, and taking into consideration every little detail. We also love creating a theme for each day of the programme where all the elements (the activities, the entertainment during the dinner, the gifts, etc.) are connected to each other and blend together to tell a story..a story that the participants will remember forever.
inVOYAGE: Madrid is rich in culture. How do you incorporate the local culture into incentive programs to create an authentic experience?
Yulia Lekomtseva: For me, the answer to this question lies in our company´s name: heritage. We strive to create experiences that really transmit the authenticity and the traditions of the destination. We want the participants to really understand the local culture and to experience Spain in way that locals do. For example, one of the tours on the inVoyage Madrid´s programme is called “Made for Madrileños Foodie Tour”, which means that you will experience the tapas as if you were going out with your friends from Madrid on a Friday afternoon..but I don´t want to give too much away!
inVOYAGE: What challenges do you typically encounter in the incentive travel industry, and how do you overcome them as a leading Spanish DMC?
Yulia Lekomtseva: I believe that we all agree that our industry had a speedy recovery after the pandemic..maybe even way too speedy.. The main challenge for us was to maintain the level of service that our clients were used to in the new context of extra high demand and last-minute requests. Fortunately, we have a fabulous team in Madrid, Barcelona and Malaga that we were lucky enough to preserve almost at its full during the pandemic times, and that was what helped us to be able to keep delivering as we were doing before and even better!
inVOYAGE: In such a dynamic industry, how do you stay informed about industry trends and changes, and how does this inform your approach to the work you do?
Yulia Lekomtseva: By constant networking with our industry pals through the different associations that we are part of like euromic or SITE..and, of course, thanks to inVoyage and your fabulous educational content at your events!
inVOYAGE: I know you’ve been working hard in the background to bring a sustainable angle to our event in Madrid. With sustainability a growing concern, how do you integrate sustainable practices into incentive programs without compromising on the quality of the experience? And how have these been received by clients and participants?
Yulia Lekomtseva: In my opinion, there is no such thing as doing too little when it comes to sustainability at events. Vincent Van Gogh once said: “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together” and, for me, this makes so much sense when applying sustainable practices to an incentive programme. Just the fact of using a printing company that employs people with mental disabilities for our signage is already a step in the right direction and it doesn´t cost more money, you would need signage anyway, right?
Involving a local NGO in one of the activities during the trip is also something that we have done on several occasions and you will experience this one first hand once you are in Madrid…
inVOYAGE: And finally what are you most looking forward to at inVOYAGE Madrid!
Yulia Lekomtseva: To showing all of you that Madrid is CHULO! “Chulo” is a Spanish word that probably does not exists in any other language. It means something like “neat” or “cool” and it reflects that unique atmosphere that only Madrid has. Here is a little teaser for you to start getting excited about the upcoming inVoyage in Madrid: Madrid is Chulo
inVOYAGE is headed to Madrid! Join the inVOYAGE retreat as we take 100 of the top luxury brands to Rosewood Villa Magna, to network under one roof in a truly spectacular, luxury incentive showcase.