Sixty incentive travel professionals gathered in Verbier, Switzerland last weekend for SITE Global’s inaugural European event, Incentive Summit Europe (ISE).

Held April 25-28, 2019 at the award-winning W Verbier, the invitation-only boutique event welcomed delegates from 16, mainly European, countries for three-days of high-level, experiential learning and networking. Attendance at the event underlined the strength of the incentive travel industry in traditionally strong source markets like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands and also brought into relief emerging source markets such as Poland and Ireland.

“With Incentive Summit Americas we built the model and tweaked it over the past four editions – compact event, great buyer/supplier balance, immersive education, mountain destination. It’s now the ‘must attend’ event for incentive travel professionals in the U.S. and Canada and it gives me immense pride and pleasure during my year as SITE president to launch it in Europe with almost 60 participants,” said Philip Eidsvold, CIS, CITP, VP, Strategic Alliances, One10 and president, SITE.

“Global membership is at an all-time high at SITE and events like the Incentive Summit series deliver face-to-face, annual opportunities at a regional level for our members and friends to connect, learn and discover. We’re currently researching the opportunities for Incentive Summit Asia for 2020/2021 as the next step in an events strategy that will bring regular face-to-face events to all regions. For SITE it’s all about real people in real places in real time,” said Didier Scaillet, CIS, CITP, CEO, SITE.

“A key pillar for the Incentive Summit series is destination discovery and Switzerland is honoured to have been the inaugural host for ISE. With Verbier as the backdrop, the W hotel as our home away from home and Ovation Switzerland adding the secret sauce as lead DMC, this was always going to be a great success. But the weather gods smiled on us too delivering magical, late April snow to greet our first morning here and glorious Spring sunshine for our unique mountain top lunch organized by local DMC, Kando. This has been a wonderful event, showcasing Switzerland as a premier incentive travel location,” said Barbara Albrecht, director, Switzerland Convention & Incentive Bureau (SCIB).

SITE Nite Europe is next on the association’s roster of global events. It will be held Monday, May 20th at Depot 1899—a 100-year-old tram depot transformed into a unique venue—in the heart of the popular Sachsenhausen district of Frankfurt, Germany.