Inbound travel numbers and post-pandemic tourism recovery for the countries.
MOONACHIE, NJ – Spain and Portugal experienced an uptick in travelers this summer with an incentive travel group of nearly 4,000 passengers orchestrated by Central Holidays that boosted inbound travel numbers and revenue for the international destinations. During the massive group trip, the long-established travel brand also presented a series of mega events at Hacienda San Miguel De Montelirio, one of the finest examples of rural architecture in Andalusia, and continues to receive rave reviews for attention to every detail in every element of the group’s experiences.
Central Holidays Group Travel Experiences organized all the elements of this “Supertrip” that took almost 4,000 salespeople and their families to Spain and Portugal for World System Builder (WSB), a California-headquartered financial services marketing company.
The group of nearly 4,000 travelers, recently back from Spain and Portugal, contributed millions of dollars to the economies of these and surrounding countries where pre- and post-extension trips were enjoyed — staying in a vast range of hotels for a total of 11,753 room nights; traveling via 100+ buses, vans, and private cars; joining in splendid private excursions led by hundreds of English-speaking professional guides; and eating more than 90,000 meals as they reveled in nine days of meticulously planned travel experiences in the Iberian Peninsula.
"Being travel experts for 50 years now as we celebrate our golden anniversary year, we have organized trips for world-renown companies like Microsoft, BMW, and Amway – that featured group travel participants of up to 18K travelers, but this group was different from any other. You see, when we visited Portugal and Spain and explained that we would be bringing 3-4,000 group travelers to them – no one believed us as the pandemic loomed…but we made it happen – safely and successfully,” said Baher Ghabbour, chairman of Sakkara Group International (SGI) the parent company of Central Holidays.
"In fact, this incentive group has traveled with Central Holidays many times over the past 10 years, increasing from 600 people on their first trip with us throughout Paris to 4,000 people in Portugal and Spain this year," said Ghabbour. "It's group travel opportunities like this that will continue to help tourism to bounce-back stronger than ever after these unprecedented years. Beyond that, this success serves to further demonstrate to our travel advisor partners just how integral group travel is to helping grow their business to fantastic new levels and how they too can benefit from the outstanding revenues and repeat business of group travel with the help of our group planning experts here at Central Holidays."
Advancing Technology in Incentive Travel
As part of the included offerings from Central Holidays Group Travel Experiences, the company developed an easy-to-use website with booking engine for the group's travelers. Conveniently available 24/7, travelers were able to take advantage of Central Holidays' user friendly and secure booking engine online via the group's dedicated "Supertrip" website. As a full-service incentive travel company 50 years strong, Central Holidays handled all aspects of payment processing for the group as well as innovative program operations. Beyond that, Central Holidays employed their proprietary in-house system designed to utilize QR code capabilities to alleviate the check-in/check-out process, loading of tours, distribution of hotels, and luggage transfers. Furthering technology in incentive travel, Central Holidays launched new developments to this system by adding USER Profiles to input participants' flight information, family information, allowing for self-management of each individual’s trip to include such elements as: Pre/Post Night, Pre/Post Trips, Optional Tours, Special Group Events, Dinners, and much more.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
