BBC - Motivation 2007
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Teresa Robichaux, Director of Marketing, discusses BBC and New Orleans at Motivation 2007.

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A New and Better
New Orleans Beckons
The Event Insider, October 2007
By Krisam & Global Events Partners

You can still march through the streets with a go-cup, enjoy some of the finest cuisine in the world, hear some of the grandest music, and generally enjoy life in the moment like no where else.

What’s more “It’s better”, Bonnie Boyd, CMP, president of BBC Destination Management, says of today’s New Orleans. “It’s much cleaner. You can really notice it.” That’s in addition to the new restaurants, new businesses, and even increased passion by the natives for their city.

“The real change since Katrina,” Bonnie explains, “is the way the natives look at their city. They see once again that there is no other place on earth like New Orleans. And they’re going to fight for it. They are passionate.”

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First Corporate Meeting
Held in New Orleans Since Katrina
The Event Insider, October 2005
By Krisam & Global Events Partners

New Orleans hotel, restaurant and destination management leaders came together to host 35 doctors and medical executives from Alcon, Inc, for a three-day event that is reported to have been the city's first corporate meeting held since Hurricane Katrina struck more than six weeks ago. The meeting took place October 14-16 at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in the French Quarter.

For the meeting's opening night dinner, internationally renowned Chef Paul Prudhomme opened his signature K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen restaurant for the first time in six weeks. The Royal Sonesta Hotel accommodated corporate executives overnight in suites next to FEMA and local officials. And New Orleans destination management specialist Bonnie Boyd, President of Bonnie Boyd & Company, supplied the buses, the meeting favors, the coordination - and the inspiration.

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Xerox Canada:
Duplicating Its Success
CORPORATE & INCENTIVE TRAVEL MAGAZINE, JUNE 1999
By George Seli

Xerox Canada is no stranger to incentive travel rewards; 30 years of these campaigns have proven the company can make sales achievers into sales overachievers. The challenge is to keep the destinations fresh, and to create events that are truly eventful. After all, the winners from Xerox of British Columbia deserved it: They posted year-over-year revenue increases of 16.2 percent and profit increases of 38.2 percent to outsell all other of Xerox Canada's Customer Business Units during the first six months of fiscal 1997.

There were two-and-a-half times more winners than anticipated - a welcome surprise for the firm. So now it was the company's turn to surprise the qualifiers with a destination they hadn't yet experienced: New Orleans, LA.

Vladimir Haltigin, CITE, Xerox Canada, who managed the program, stresses that although New Orleans is a city of spontaneity, nothing in the trip is left to chance. It is an orchestrated effort between the incentive house, destination management company, hotel, airline, and in-house program manager that gets the results.

"All of them, whether they realize it or not, are essential to the program's success," he says. Haltigin worked with Bonnie Boyd, BBC Destination Management, New Orleans, Don Brommet, CITE, Partners in Performance, Markham, Ontario; and the Omni Royal Orleans and St. Louis Hotels, among others.

All of these contributors, then, deserve credit, for the "President's Club: New Orleans" program received a 1998 SITE Crystal Award, First Place, for Most Outstanding Regional Incentive Travel Program - Canada.

One of Haltigin's guiding lights for praiseworthy planning is to "understand the audience." He knew he was working with a young, high-energy group, and the first event reflected this: an opening-night organized march through the French Quarter. The group was accompanied by a Dixieland band, as well as a police escort, to the doorstep of the historic Boucvalt House.

Securing the use of this landmark property was done through Boyd for, as Haltigin points out, offsite venues are traditionally handled by the locally knowledgeable DMC. The house, more that 150 years old, had the "perfect ambience" of intimacy and historical interest for the group's reception, according to Haltigin.

The next day's options were flexible, though not spur of the moment. "Nothing is ever played by ear," asserts Haltigin. Available activities included visits to Southern plantations, Mississippi riverboat tours, and even a stop at the mansion of popular mystery-horror novelist Anne Rice. Such events were in fact tailored to the group's educated demographic.

Other events were more lighthearted. "Rendez-voodoo on the Bayou" featured a live alligator, as well as a Bayou band that also did the catering. The group even took in a New Orleans Saints football game.

How prepared were the qualifiers for all the mirth that was in store for them? Even though they had never been to New Orleans, and few had gone individually, they were quite informed of the reward through video and even a destination Web site with relevant links. Haltigin's promotionally astute team knew the sales achievers were Internet savvy.

Anticipation is a powerful tool. For the third and final night, qualifiers were just told to dress up. They were put on Mardi Gras busses and transported to Blaine Kern's "Mardi Gras World." This storage venue for real Mardi Gras floats was the site for a Masquerade Ball, accented by Thezzam, an interactive dance team that mixed through the group.

Originally, the greater-than-expected number of qualifiers presented a planning challenge in view of the adjustments that had to be made. Yet the large group ended up being an advantage, allowing the use of Mardi Gras World.

This was a dinner-and-entertainment party, standard fare for a "final night," but the pace set it apart. The group would dance for a time, then settle down to watch and dine, then dance once again, all with a jubilant informality.

The Xerox winners really "let their hair down," but behind it all were some very sound business principles. Haltigin says it's important to see incentives mainly as "rewards for achieving company strategy." They are not just romps and celebrations, but devices to achieve business loyalty.

That employee commitment will only come on the heels of a trip that, in Haltigin's words, "exceeds expectations," both for the qualifiers and Xerox. This New Orleans adventure was successful on both counts, turning-on the sales team to a new venue, and reaffirming what Xerox knew all along . . . incentive travel works.

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