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Planes, Trains & Automobiles
November 05, 2007
Rocket through the sky or race around the track on these unforgettable experiences.
By David Desrocher
In the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Steve Martin and John Candy experience about every inconvenience possible as they try to make their way home for the holidays. The comedy is a wonderful illustration of everything that can go wrong while traveling, inconveniences that are unacceptable for an incentive award winner hoping to experience the trip of a lifetime.
Today more than ever, incentive planners are considering the trip to a destination as important as the destination itself. With the variety of luxury jetliners, motor coaches, and high-performance sports cars available to choose from, selecting how to get a reward winner from Point A to Point B requires fresh consideration. And with some forms of luxury transportation—think Ferarri—the trip is the destination.
Take the airline industry: Where once a coach-class, commercial flight to a luxury location was sufficient, the bar has been raised, particularly for repeat winners. Combine those expectations with the rise of companies such as Marquis Jet, and planners have discovered creative alternatives that put even first-class commercial accommodations to shame. Just ask Randy Brandoff, vice president of marketing at Marquis Jet, a New York–based company whose partnership with NetJets gives it access to a fleet of over 690 aircraft globally. Says Brandoff, "With today's hectic work and home schedules, time has become a precious commodity. Commercial air travel is plagued with numerous issues, including extended check-ins, long security lines, lost baggage and the very likely possibility that your flight will be delayed, if not canceled." Clients on a private, chartered jet can avoid all that, thus saving significant time and avoiding undue inconvenience.
 Feeling a bit more daring? How about a zero-gravity flight where you can experience the weightlessness of space travel? That is precisely the opportunity that ZERO-G, a Las Vegas–based company, provides. ZERO-G has been flying incentive reward winners, celebrities and media personalities ranging in age from 12 to 93. The aircraft interior reveals a zero-gravity playroom, complete with padded walls and floors and video cameras to record the experience. The 90-minute flight allows passengers to experience martian gravity (1/3-gravity), lunar gravity (1/6-gravity), and total weightlessness at zero gravity.
The $3,500 price tag, per seat, includes professional training from an astronaut, a flight suit, complimentary merchandise, awards and a post-event party as well as photos and a DVD of the flight. The flight itself is difficult to describe to someone who has never experienced weightlessness, but a spokesperson for the company says "picture yourself in an environment where you can fly the length of an airplane cabin like Superman, flip like a gymnast, pour water in the air and watch the droplets hover before your eyes, or release a handful of M&M's and chase them down like a game of human Pac-Man."
If it sounds too unbelievable to be true, consider the review of Apollo 11 astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, who has firsthand experience in both space flight and on ZERO-G's flagship aircraft, G-Force One. "It was exhilarating! It was great to experience both lunar gravity and weightlessness again!"
Another exciting experience is available through Incredible Adventures, a company based in Sarasota, Fla. that specializes in experiential travel and adventure. It provides adventures such as Edge of Space, which flies you in a Russian MiG-31 Foxhound aircraft to a place where the sky above is black and the sky below is blue; and the Air Combat USA adventure, which puts you at the controls of the SIAI Marchetti SF260 (beside a skilled pilot of course), where you can engage opponents in six "g-pulling" dogfights.
Greg Claxton, director of sales for Incredible Adventures, believes that clients are looking for something extra. "We offer a variety of unique adventures that are sure to get your adrenaline pumping."
The company's MiGs over Moscow adventure is just that. From Moscow, clients are taken to the historic Russian town Nizhny Novgorod. Then it is into the legendary MiG-29 and up into the Russian skies. A professional pilot will take you on a breathtaking tour of the countryside in a military jet at breakneck speeds.
One person who experienced the adrenaline-pumping experience of MiGs Over Moscow was George Eisele, member of the board of directors at Monster Worldwide. Having participated in a number of experiential adventures, like flying combat missions over California, he rates his trip to Moscow at the top. "Russia was fascinating, the Russian people were very interesting."
He admits that in the two weeks leading up to his flight, he was somewhat apprehensive, though any sign of nerves disappeared on the day of the flight. Soon he was strapped into the cockpit of a MiG-31 with a trained Russian pilot, and minutes later they were rocketing through the sky at 2.5 times the speed of sound. "Above me, all I could see was black," says Eisele. "It was just the coolest thing I'd ever done."
 People, Get Ready
For more than 200 years railroads have proven to be an effective means of travel, and for the better part of that history, the Orient-Express has been synonymous with luxury. Beginning in 1883, the first Orient-Express train steamed away from Paris, bound for Romania, and featured enormous sleeping cars as well as a finely appointed dining car complete with a smoking lounge. By the 1890s it had become known as the "train of kings," due to the frequent passage of royalty, including King Charles of Romania and Sultan Abdul Hamid II, ruler of Turkey.
Besides this link to history, passengers also experience the vistas of the countryside in a way that only train travel can provide, while en route to and from great cities: London, Paris, Istanbul, Prague, Budapest, Venice and Rome, on its most famous line, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. On the journey from London to Venice for example, "guests have the delight of waking up on the second morning in the scenic Swiss Alps," says Anna Nash, public relations manager for the famed Orient-Express. And while the view outside the train is breathtaking, the atmosphere onboard is equally impressive.
Sleeping cars have comfortable beds, finely appointed Art Deco interiors and include toiletries and Orient-Express robes and slippers.
The highlight is the bar car, where men are often dressed in black tie and women in formal evening gowns. Nash refers to it as the focal point of the train, "where guests enjoy mingling with fellow passengers, having a Bellini whilst listening to the pianist tickling the ivories on the baby grand piano."
Robert Guerriero, president and executive director of Salem, Mass.–based The Journeymasters, specializes in developing luxury reward packages. The Journeymasters created an incentive reward for a client that included a charter of the Orient-Express. The journey took reward winners from Interlaken, Switzerland to Stresa, Italy. "To add a little bit of humor to the ride, we gave 'tuits'[tokens of procrastination] to each guest to pay for their drinks," says Guerriero.
Upon the conclusion of the trip, one of the guests and his wife approached Guerriero and said, "Marsha and I had to tell you that this trip was better than our honeymoon. In fact, it's been one of the best weeks of our lives." Guerriero says that hearing this from clients is his goal, and he often uses luxury and experiential travel options to do it.
Another high-end railroad option is South Africa's The Blue Train, a state-owned luxury train that offers five-star accommodations and breathtaking views of the African countryside. Zimasa Velaphi, brand marketing and communication manager for The Blue Train, states that the company "delivers the most phenomenally invigorating, unique African leisure experience to all our guests." She mentions fine cuisine and personalized butler service that allow passengers to live like royalty while experiencing the mystique of a train that has carried kings and presidents since the 1920s. Named for the carriages' distinctive blue exterior, the train can be seen cutting through the African landscape along its traditional route between Pretoria and Cape Town.
Groups can take an excursion away from the train and visit a diamond mine in Kimberly. Or, winners can depart the train and visit Bakubung Game Lodge, where qualified rangers and trackers can take them to see lions, cheetahs, hippos and crocodiles.
If you're looking for a similar experience closer to home, consider traveling on VIA Rail Canada. With trains covering more than 14,000 kilometers of railways, VIA Rail Canada transports over 4 million passengers each year. And given that it has routes that run through the Rockies and Pacific region, the prairies and Manitoba region, and the Atlantic region lines, which run from Montreal to Nova Scotia, there is an option for everyone.
One of its trains, The Canadian, the transcontinental train that runs from Vancouver to Toronto, was ranked by National Geographic as one of the top five rail trips in the world. The Ocean, which runs in the Atlantic region, cuts through the small villages along the banks of the St. Lawrence River before entering the Matapédia River valley, with incredible views of Chaleur Bay. Trains also have a Skyline Car for entertainment, where passengers can experience 360-degree views in the observation room, or a drink in the lounge below.
 The Need for Speed
Step into the Ferrari 599 GTB and settle into the soft, Italian leather seats. You are now behind the wheel of an automobile with 620 horsepower that moves from zero to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds and has a top speed of 205 miles per hour. Roadtrips, a company based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, creates incentive programs that put clients in the seats of mint-condition Ferraris and Porsches, and then creates unique driving experiences in some of the more breathtaking and beautiful places in Europe, including Bavaria, Central Switzerland, the Black Forest and the Lake Constance area, shared by Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
Janice Labossiere, a spokesperson for Roadtrips, stresses the company's policy of offering complete and creative solutions for corporate incentives. "We work with our clients to create travel experiences that capture the attention and imagination of their target audience. Then, we take care of all the details with complete travel fulfillment services—allowing our clients to focus on what they do best, while we take care of the people who have given their best."
Its Ferrari Driving Experience, for example, puts the incentive reward winner in Tuscany, where, according to Roadtrips' literature, "clients can breathe the scent of olives as they sweep through the rolling Tuscan hills at the wheel of one of three Ferrari models." Clients who participate in this experience stay in the Fonteverde Natural Spa Resort, located in the ancient town of San Casciano dei Bagni. And while these five-star accommodations may be exquisite, complete with a 17th-century de' Medici portico and an avant-garde spa center, it is the driving experience that makes the package complete.
If you want to drive cars that aren't street legal, you can look to Richard Petty Driving Experience of Concord, N.C. Its sales team can design race car experiences at over 20 tracks throughout the United States, including the renowned Daytona International Raceway and Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The company offers a number of packages that can put clients into a NASCAR-style stock car, either as a driver or in a ride-along experience with a professional instructor.
The company specializes in corporate and incentive packages, designing racing experiences for groups of 10 to 1,500 and possibly more. Recently, Richard Petty Driving Experience created an incentive package for 40 incentive winners throughout the country who came together to race each other at Chicagoland Speedway. Then there is what Chris McKee, director of promotions and media relations for the company, describes as the "granddaddy of them all": A VIP experience that includes spending the day with Richard Petty himself, while clients get behind the wheel and race 80 laps over two days.
A similar experience is available in Europe featuring single-seat Formula One racing cars such as the Vauxhall Lotus Formula One car, which can go from zero to 60 in 4.5 seconds and has a top speed of 150 miles per hour. Track Days, based out of the United Kingdom, can put you in the driver's seat of the Vauxhall Lotus, or in a similar car, on a number of tracks on the European circuit.
For example, the Driving Experience at Mallory Park has an itinerary that includes an introduction and briefing on circuit driving techniques, familiarization laps and then four driving laps in a BMW D3 with a professional driver. Then, it is into the single seat of the three-liter Formula One car for four laps. Incentive groups can run 12 drivers at a time, racing each other at high speeds for a chance at victory lane.
If the goal is luxury or high-end experiential, incentive planners have a number of options using planes, trains and automobiles that make getting there more than half the fun. Whether it is a relaxing ride through the Canadian Rockies, a drive through the hills of Tuscany in a Ferrari, or an "Edge of Space" journey miles above the Earth, there are many ways to create experiences that are out of this world.
Planes:
Marquis Jet: 866-JET-1400
www.marquisjet.com
ZERO-G: 800-937-6480
www.gozerog.com
Incredible Adventures: 941-346-2603
www.incredible-adventures.com
Trains:
Orient-Express: 800-524-2420
www.orient-express.com
The Blue Train: +27 12 334-8459
www.bluetrain.co.za
VIA Rail Canada: 888-842-7245
www.viarail.com
Automobiles:
Roadtrips: 800-465-1765
www.roadtrips.com
Richard Petty Driving Experience: 800-BE-PETTY
www.1800bepetty.com
Track Days: 44 870 444 5541
www.trackdays.co.uk
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