Cloud Nine Incentives marked its 15th anniversary with its biggest year of growth to date, recently reporting a 27% year-on-year increase in turnover and expanding its events and travel teams.
Driving that growth is a business evolving beyond its established roots in individual travel prizes. Clients are increasingly turning to the agency for group incentives, sales rewards and brand immersions, prompting further investment in its team and creating opportunities to build on longstanding relationships.
Emma Coleman, who joined the agency in January 2024 as director of events to develop its full-service events and group travel offering, has been instrumental in that growth. With the recent addition of Claire-Louise Brown, who joined from Bose as client relationship manager, the agency is confident of further growth in 2027.
That confidence offers an encouraging perspective at a time when the latest Incentive Travel Index points to a more cautious market outlook. We caught up with Coleman to explore what is driving demand, how programmes are changing and where Cloud Nine sees room for further growth.
A natural progression into group incentives
Much of Cloud Nine’s group business has grown out of relationships it already had. The agency works with marketing and PR agencies, as well as brands directly, delivering individual travel prizes for consumer promotions and shopper marketing campaigns. Increasingly, those clients were asking for help with group trips too.
“We had more and more clients asking for either incentives to drive sales or brand immersions and influencer events,” says Coleman. “It has been a really lovely crossover into what I would call traditional incentives.”
Drinks and hospitality brands account for much of that demand, from sales incentives for business development teams to trips introducing pub operators to a new brand or product. “We’re getting some natural growth from existing clients, but we’re also getting organic growth through those clients and into other clients related to them,” she explains.
So, is that demand coming from established incentive buyers or businesses trying travel rewards for the first time?
Coleman says both. “I’ve got certain clients that have always done some sort of incentive travel, whether that be brand immersion or true incentive, and they just know that it works. It’s such a competitive marketplace. They know that they’ve got to keep those salespeople engaged.”
Others are just discovering the benefits. One client ran its first sales travel incentive with Cloud Nine in July and has already committed to more.
“The traction that they had off the back of that has spurred a second incentive, which will happen in Q1 next year. Not only that, but they’ve also secured funding for July ’27.”
Getting to that point takes a close working relationship, particularly with a client who has never run an incentive before.
“When it’s a new client that you’ve never worked with before, you have to gain that trust and prove your mettle a little bit,” she says. “But all the way along that journey, it has felt like we’ve been a team.”
She adds that understanding the people going on the trip is essential. “The more a client can share about their people, it just helps us design something that’s going to really resonate and have the impact that they want.”
Where clients want to go
So where are incentive groups heading? While Cloud Nine’s individual travel rewards take winners around the world, most of its group business remains in Europe.
Clients still want fresh ideas, although travel time, perceptions of risk and the facilities available for groups can narrow the options. For Coleman, firsthand experience is particularly useful when suggesting somewhere a client might not have considered.
She is enthusiastic about Turkey after a visit combining Istanbul and Cappadocia and hopes to take clients to Istanbul in 2027.
“The supply network out there is fantastic, and we’ve got tried-and-tested people. The flights are a bit more expensive, the journey is a bit longer, but what you get from a value point of view is incredible.”
Further afield, Cloud Nine’s work for Corona in Colombia gave Coleman an opportunity to apply her group incentive experience to a customer and consumer promotion, delivered through a longstanding marketing agency relationship.
“When we were pitching for the business, I took the group element of it and treated it as I would an incentive group,” she explains.
That meant thinking through how to make the most of the group budget, shape the itinerary and ensure guests got what they needed from the trip, an approach she believes helped win the business.
How programmes are changing
Cloud Nine’s growth does not mean clients suddenly have much bigger budgets for incentive
“I’d say it’s pretty stable, to be honest,” she says, adding that clients are spending more with the agency overall.
Lead times are shorter than the incentive planning cycles she remembers earlier in her career. “I remember the days where you’d have the luxury of an 18-month lead into an incentive. That doesn’t happen anymore,” she says. “Most of my groups [have] three, four months’ lead-in.”
Some clients combine individual rewards throughout the year with a group trip for their top performers. That gives Cloud Nine an opportunity to work across both parts of a programme and can offer a little more time to plan the group element.
When it comes to the programme itself, Coleman is finding that guests want more say in how they spend their time. Shared experiences still matter, but so does the freedom to choose an activity, explore independently or simply do nothing.
“I think free time is still a big thing for people. That balance is still something that comes up all the time,” she says.
She favours relaxed mornings and room in the itinerary for downtime and is increasingly suggesting a choice of activities rather than having everyone follow the same programme.
“They’re still together, they’re still doing their thing, but they get to choose their own journey a bit,” she says. “People value their time on their own sometimes, and that freedom of just exploring somewhere or just doing nothing, especially if they don’t get the chance to do it at home.”
What’s next for Cloud Nine?
The expanding team is giving Coleman more support to develop the business. She welcomes the fresh perspective Claire-Louise Brown brings from outside the events industry, along with her experience of being an incentive winner herself.
“She’s been motivated by incentive travel, so she understands how it makes people feel,” says Coleman.
Recruitment across account management and travel has also given colleagues more room to focus on their own roles and work together on delivery.
“Because of the changes we’ve made and the recruitments we’ve made, everybody is working much more closely together,” she says. “I think it’s a really positive message for the team that we’re making investments where we need them.”
Asked whether 2027 looks like 2026 or stronger, she says stronger. “We had an absolute stonker of a year this year, which was amazing. So, we are still looking to grow again next year.”
The team has also had a chance to enjoy an incentive of its own. Coleman organised Cloud Nine’s recent celebration trip to Madrid, complete with teaser communications, registration and a planned programme, giving colleagues who do not come from an events background a taste of what the group offering involves.
“It was, she says, about ‘practising what we preach’ and giving the team a chance to enjoy the rewards of a busy year.”