Award Winning Incentive Service In Maldives

euromic India and the Maldives are no strangers to the Society of Incentive Travel Executives (SITE)’s Crystal Awards, amassing an impressive collection of the awards that recognises creative, practical and truly memorable incentive programs that not only keep employees engaged, but also drive business results and improve the bottom line.

Rajeev Kohli, joint Managing Director of Creative India, proudly accepted their eighth SITE Crystal Award recently, this time for their Discovery Stars Awards programme in the Maldives, winning the Excellence in Incentive Travel Asia Pacific.

This was not your ordinary and straightforward incentive (as it should have been) but instead a masterclass in how to calmly carry on when given significant challenges to the smooth running of the programme. It’s why you want industry experts like Creative Travel India, who worked alongside FMC Solutions South Africa, in charge, and why their service is award winning.

The program for 175 guests from Discovery Limited, a South African financial services company, started off with the traditional hallmarks of an excellent incentive. Designed to reward and recognize employees aligned with Discovery’s core values of purpose and ambition, organizers focused on creating a program that would leave
participants with a stronger sense of belonging within the company, motivation to amplify future performance, and enhanced well-being.

Creative Travel and FMC Solutions had also crafted this program around destination-specific challenges such as limited resort availability and high costs in a country that relies almost entirely on imports. The program was proving how ingenuity, research, and teamwork can make a “magical” incentive experience possible, that is unique, cost-effective, and engaging.

However, disaster struck when the discovery of the Omicron COVID variant upended the group’s travel arrangements with the panic-driven cancelation of virtually all commercial flights back to South Africa.

Creative Travel and FMC Solutions immediately got to work arranging new return travel, relying on a close industry partnership the teams were able to leverage to secure private air transfer. They encountered further turbulence when confirming departure times — a complication that required contacting the Maldives’ Minister of Civil
Aviation to sort out, and skillful negotiation with the resort team so guests would be kept comfortable despite the disruptions.

It didn’t end there either. During a layover in Malé, further delays required Creative Travel and FMC Solutions to immediately deliver a creative solution to secure lodging and food for qualifiers on an island even less prepared to host this large group than the one they’d just left. The teams tapped into limited destination resources and  secured lodging, transport, and plenty of food & drink to make sure participants’ needs were met and to keep the group calm. Flights eventually took off, with all guests
accounted for and well-looked after.

Coordinating this incentive turned into an adventure packed with more than anyone involved had bargained for. It was by far the most complicated and difficult incentive Creative Travel and FMC Solutions have ever run, but one that ended as a grand success.