SARASOTA, FL—Grand Incentives announced today the launch of the Grand Vacations Savings Program, an innovative, high value, high quality voluntary employee benefit program. Grand Vacations, www.gograndvacations.com, enables employees to plan, save, and improve the quality of their vacations in a structured and user-friendly environment, all while achieving a wide array of family-focused and unlimited year-round travel and entertainment savings. The program represents a fresh opportunity for employers to add a dynamic, differentiated, and compelling offering to their benefits portfolio.
68% of employees associate their overall job satisfaction with their benefits satisfaction. After six straight years of increased employer health care costs, both employers and employees are feeling the pinch. Increased costs have made it harder for employers to offer comprehensive benefits to their employees, and have forced many employers to cut back on existing benefit programs. With more and more employees closely linking job satisfaction with their benefits package, with costs on the rise, and with employees demanding more, many employers are finding themselves in a bind as they look to provide their employees with high quality, high value benefit choices in innovative and cost effective ways. Recognizing the accelerating trend toward “voluntary benefits,†more employers are looking for differentiated and affordable benefits to offer their employees.
The Grand Vacations Savings Program was designed to meet this need, following extensive research to identify the gaps in current benefits programs, and identifying the aspects of benefit programs that truly help employers attract, motivate, satisfy, and retain employees. National employee survey data confirms that 68% of employees consider vacations and holidays their most valued benefit, but in 2006 more than 415 million vacation days went unused. Based on these findings, and recognizing the critical need for employers to include more high-value, low-cost voluntary benefits in their employee benefits portfolio, the Grand Vacations Savings Program is now being introduced nationwide.
Grand Vacations is a collaboration between Grand Incentives and Loyalty Solutions, two leading innovators of consumer and travel-related incentives, premiums, and reward programs.
Grand Vacations, which is the first program of its kind to come to market, helps employees to plan and save in a structured program for a high-quality vacation that might ordinarily be outside of their financial reach. With funds escrowed and managed by Chicago Title Company, one of the nation’s leading financial institutions with over 150 years serving customers, members can bank on the reliability and quality of the program. Grand Vacations offers three affordable plans, starting as low as $13.62 per week. Employees can choose from more than 3500 preferred worldwide resort destinations, including some of the world’s most popular and exclusive vacation spots. Rather than typical hotel rooms, members have access to one and two bedroom resort accommodations, which provide more amenities, space, and resort luxuries, all for less money. In addition to the vacation savings plan, the program includes a value-rich member benefits program that features significant travel and entertainment discounts, saving members time and money on their family vacations, and everyday purchases year-round. In all, depending on the plan selected, members can realize combined savings of $1000 to $2600 or more on a single week’s vacation.
José Martinez, CEO, Grand Incentives, stated that the program stands alone in the marketplace.
“As companies of all sizes struggle to embellish their benefits portfolio while keeping overhead costs to a minimum, they will be pleased to discover this program, because the Grand Vacations Savings Program comes with a high-perceived value and low-or-no-investment on the part of the employer, while igniting real excitement for their employees with a program they can bank on.â€
The Grand Vacations program addresses the key needs employers are seeking to meet in a voluntary benefit program. For employers, it’s designed to increase employee retention and recruitment efforts, and can be used as a cost effective satisfaction tool. In addition, the program’s reputable and reliable providers, and employers’ ease of program management and administration make this a low maintenance, employer-friendly program. For employees, the program provides ease and affordability through payroll deduction, and an opportunity to improve home-work balance while planning and provisioning for a quality family vacation each year. Members can achieve significant savings with a program of superior quality designed to deliver great results, all packaged into a one-stop, reliable source for vacation planning. Between unparalleled choices of travel destinations and options, superior quality, personalized service, and ease of use and payment, members enjoy the exclusive benefits of a fully portable voluntary program they can take with them wherever they work, and which they wont find anywhere else.
“While the savings alone make the program impressive and attractive to employees, it’s the real and high-perceived value, and the simplicity and ease of administering the program that attracts employers who are seeking to drastically reduce costs and drastically increase quality of benefits for their employees,†states Martinez.
Grand Vacations offers employers four ways to participate in the program, yielding ultimate flexibility. The first participation option is simply to allow the program to be presented to employees without any employer financial contribution. The second participation option is for employers to help get employees started in the program by paying their initial membership fee or their first month’s savings contribution. The third employer participation option to for the employer to contribute a portion of the monthly savings amount to their employee’s savings accounts, just like they would to their employees’ retirement plans. Or, employers can offer the program as a benefit or a reward, covering the full cost of the program for select employees.
After choosing the plan that best suits their family vacation needs, employees’ contributions toward the plan are made through payroll deduction. Members can log in 24/7 to the Grand Vacations website to check their travel savings account balances, preview resort destinations, and plan their vacation. Vacations can be redeemed after the account is fully funded, or members can redeem their travel early at any time by simply paying the difference between what’s been saved and the redemption amount.
Commenting on the scope of the opportunity for program participants, Dave Swanson, CEO of Loyalty Solutions stated: “This program really levels the playing field for members and provides them an opportunity to insure a quality vacation for their family each year through a structured monthly savings approach. Our company has been involved in countless new program launches, with millions of members enrolled, but the Grand Vacations program truly stands out as one that meets a genuine need, and does so in a way that reflects the kind of commitment to quality, customer service, security, privacy, and innovation that are rare in the market today and which make employers and employees alike excited about the possibility of being a part of the programâ€.
José Martinez, commented in closing: “This is a benefit that speaks to the heart of an employee†Martinez continued: “Other voluntary benefits such as vision care, life insurance, and group legal plans may look good on paper, but they don’t have the emotional appeal or high perceived value that are such strong motivators for employees. The Grand Vacations Savings Program is an excellent opportunity for employers to differentiate themselves, reward their employees, and build satisfaction and goodwill, with an innovative, high quality, high value program designed to maximize resultsâ€.
The Grand Vacations website can be found at: www.gograndvacations.com.
For Media Inquiries, contact:
Daniel Seaman
Grand Vacations Program
203.401.8795 ext. 906
For Program Inquiries, contact:
David English
Grand Vacations Program
941.552.7885 ext. 153
For Marketing Inquiries, contact:
David Swanson
Grand Vacations Program
203.401.8795 ext. 907
About Grand Incentives: (www.grandincentives.com)
Grand Incentives is a premier national travel incentive company set apart from competitors through an innovative array of promotional travel offers that enable the corporate world to more effectively activate, acquire, retain, renew and enhance customer and employee relationships. Grand Incentives designs and administers countless comprehensive and customized travel programs, listening to the needs of clients to provide specific products and programs that work best for them. Grand’s in-house fulfillment center is staffed with experienced, knowledgeable and friendly travel agents who support customers in a professional and respectful manner. With a commitment to the highest levels of customer service and quality, and a broad portfolio of clients, including those in the Fortune 500, Grand Incentives is a fully licensed and bonded Corporation by the State of Florida as a seller of travel.
About Loyalty Solutions: (www.loyaltysolutionsltd.com)
Loyalty Solutions is a national provider of consumer-related travel and merchandise reward programs, premiums, incentives, and membership benefit programs, as well as consulting, sales, marketing, website, and online enterprise development solutions to the direct marketing, travel, banking, and retail industries. Loyalty Solutions offers a wide range of consumer-based products and programs centered on consumer loyalty and employee reward programs, membership packages, brand promotions and credit card and stored value card initiatives designed to promote customer acquisition, retention, and satisfaction.
