NAME: ACHIEVERS WAIKIKI 2016
TYPE: INCENTIVE (ANNUAL AMWAY ANZ ACHIEVERS INCENTIVE)
BY: AMWAY AUSTRALIA (Renato Fabbro)
PAX: 362
DATE: NOVEMBER 15-19, 2016
VENUE: SHERATON WAIKIKI
To follow up after Achievers Hong Kong at the Shangri La Kowloon in 2015 was always going to be hard. Asian destinations have so much to offer. Quality hotels, quality F&B and as varied as their experiences can be, they still are considered “experiential”.
So, why go to Hawaii? Our feedback surveys were constantly saying ‘let’s go back to Hawaii’, so we did.
Compared to Asia, it’s a lot more mellow BUT it does boast an element of excitement when you walk down Kalakaua Avenue amongst the throngs of tourists. So much has been developed there lately. So many restaurants, new hotel products and the ocean spray makes it all worth it. So, we selected Waikiki as our destination.
I had learnt early in my career to never compete with what a destination has to offer and for this program, Waikiki Beach is the offer. So, we thought long and hard on how to make it work and by reversing the agenda to a ‘leave it to them’ approach, this would NOT compete with the beach, the sun, the palms and the qualifiers. So we built an agenda around a lot of free time.
In fact, our experiential activities were scheduled multiple times throughout the day. Our ‘wear a piece of Waikiki’ gift was based on a pair of Maui Jims and an item from the Tommy Bahama store that our participants could collect over two days. If you couldn’t make it over those two days, you could use your credit to eat in a local restaurant when it suited you.
Our day of meetings were again scheduled across the AM, lunch time and PM to allow flexibility. We moved our meeting to later in the week to allow our participants to be acclimated to their surroundings. Even our farewell drinks was a walk to the property next door – the Royal Hawaiian on the beach.
Once we worked the agenda, we needed to create our Amway Events ANZ App to spell out the schedule and give our qualifiers all the event details at their fingertips. Again, we thought less is more here. Apart from the daily schedule, we added our usual social media options and our activities so they knew where to meet and what the weather was going to be like. The weather incidentally was so good to us for the whole time there.
We also provided them with a list of local restaurants and a map feature so they could find their way around and back to the hotel.