What to Include in Your Incentive Travel RFP (With a Simple Template)

What we tell planners

An incentive RFP that we can answer without a week of clarification includes: legal client name and the agency if you are an incentive house; programme name and contest year; preferred dates and flexibility; qualifier plus guest count (and a cap); origin cities and whether air is in or out of scope; passport nationalities or a promise that the rooming list will carry them; and whether this is President’s Club, channel, or mixed.

Destination and product: countries you will consider (Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zanzibar, Seychelles, Mauritius); must-haves (Migration positioning, gorillas, island gala) versus nice-to-haves; group size honesty versus camp and permit reality; dietary and accessibility; whether a working meeting is forbidden (it should be, on a true incentive); brand constraints (no costume ethnography, no orphanage visits).

Commercial and risk: budget band or ‘propose to a cap’; itemised versus all-in wrapper; payment and cancellation; insurance and medevac expectations; 24-hour ops desk; named lead; sustainability notes you actually want (conservancy fees, not a tree slide); decision date. Ask for a visa matrix, a weather/political clause, and a statement of what the DMC will not do.

Simple template (paste into your document): 1. Objective and qualification model. 2. Dates and flexibility. 3. Headcount and guest policy. 4. Origins and air scope. 5. Nationality mix. 6. Destination shortlist and must-have experiences. 7. Sample night sequence (or ask us to propose). 8. F&B and gala notes. 9. Duty of care and medical. 10. Sustainability and cultural constraints. 11. Budget and commercial form. 12. Decision criteria and timeline. 13. Attachments: last year’s survey, brand book, rooming-list fields. Send it to sales@serengetiexperience.com or via /rfp. We would rather receive this than a 40-page vision PDF with no headcount.