The Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) has released its Wellness in Meetings and Incentive Travel Study that provides insights and benchmarks for incorporating wellness into incentive travel and meetings programs, and highlights a disconnect between an expressed interest and actual implementation of wellness programs.

“Each year, companies in the United States invest billions of dollars to both help their employees get healthier and additional billions to help them meet face to face,” says IRF President Melissa Van Dyke. “The research featured in The IRF Wellness in Meetings and Incentive Travel Study leads us to question how integrated these efforts within organizations are—and what the meetings and incentives industry could do to create better synergies.”

The study found that most meeting planners agree that wellness is a critical focus for either their company (87 percent) or their client’s (74 percent) and that more than 90 percent of them are personally enthusiastic about the subject. It also noted that 40 percent of planners described meetings as “mostly healthy” and 19 percent said they were “very healthy”—the top-ranked standard or preferred food and beverage wellness inclusions for meetings and events were healthy snacks (83 percent), water and reduced calorie drinks (82 percent) and fish, chicken and lean meats (80 percent). Smoke-free facilities (90 percent) and free access to fitness facilities (80 percent) were the top-ranked standard or preferred meeting design elements supporting wellness.

The IRF Wellness in Meetings and Incentive Travel Study, and its accompanying white paper, Spanning the Wellness Divide: From Interest to Action in Meeting and Incentive Travel Wellness provide a detailed look at practices meeting planners are using to design and implement effective wellness programs.

Click here to view or download the full study or the white paper.