Client/Situation:

Challenge: Locate and secure Caribbean destination, arrange winners’ transportation, accommodations, meals and recreation plus provide a private venue and arrangements for “The Republic of Cuervo Gold Untamed Music Jam” an exclusive all-day rock concert.

Strategies: Hakins blocked three Caribbean resorts on three islands, booked air transportation for all 300 winners, coordinated food and beverage functions and arranged a variety of activities including tours on chartered tallships. We obtained a private four-acre island and collaborated with the client’s promotion agency to organize all facets of the concert.

For event day, we planned and coordinated VIP services for three rock bands, water taxi transportation, field meals, hospitality and security. Hakins senior management and 10 professional on-site travel directors supervised every phase.

Results: Client and participants were elated with the entire project. The contest promotion won several industry awards and the client immediately engaged Hakins to manage the following year’s program. When the client contact moved to another Fortune 500 company, he brought Hakins along!

Challenge:

Strategies: Combine years of sports marketing experience with extensive group travel expertise to establish working relationships with Olympic Organizing Committees and host cities to negotiate and pre-plan every contingency years in advance.

Results: Hakins has been a fixture at the Olympic Games since 1988, repeatedly serving the VIP group travel and hospitality needs of select national and international corporations, artfully engineering and matching travel, event, and meal schedules.

Hakins’ performance at one Winter Olympics included the planning and management of meals, event tickets and transportation for over twelve hundred people, three national corporations and one international corporation.

Client/Situation:

Challenge: Find destinations that would satisfy the diverse interests and lifestyles of their sales people and motivate the required increased performances.

Strategies: Hakins designed a “Plan Your Own Itinerary ” program that allowed qualifiers to access five-star luxury resorts, cruises, and airlines in order to plan their own schedules. Computer savvy participants satisfied their “details now” mentality with their search engine skills to find the resorts or cruises just right for them with flight itineraries that met their individual needs. The creative but less computer literate winners simply called Hakins professional travel counselors for advice!

Results: Sales exceeded all program objectives and winners enjoyed their own individually planned travel awards within their own timelines and interests, including San Francisco, Maui, Grand Cayman and cruises in every direction.

Challenge:

Strategies: A casino theme combining great food and interaction in an exciting atmosphere is a fairly common closing night motif as is - especially in Florida - a “Key West” motif, the “Southern most point in the USA”, strolling characters, Key West beers and perhaps a cigar roller.

We proposed combining the casino theme with the Key West theme and taking the event to higher level.

Following the evening’s casino festivities, the sales executive in Key West attire, sporting a Conch Republic hat and puffing a cigar, addressed the group, announcing the silent auction winner and the big money winner at the casino.

Then he announced the prizes for a surprise grand prize raffle: 18 names were drawn and those winners were headed to Key West the following day on two Cape Air private charter planes for touring and lunch at Louie’s famous Key West restaurant.

Since the next day was also departure day, Hakins rescheduled all 18 return tickets from the next morning to the next evening, with no more than the nominal cost of a “change fee” for the return flight.

Results: A bit of a gamble, managed well with contingency plans if later returns were not available, we quite successfully combined the casino concept with the surprise sweepstakes and turned the Key West theme into a memorable real life visit for 18 lucky winners!

Challenge: Custom design a trip award incorporating the movie and the magic of Harry Potter into a once-in-a-lifetime family adventure that only Coca-Cola could bring to winners from the US.

Strategies: Hakins teamed up with Select Travel Service - one of our well-known partners and destination management specialists - and the client's promotion and event agencies to take over 200 families of 4 on a dream trip of a lifetime to Great Britain in the summer of 2002.

Results: Over 800 enthralled participants … corporate executive officers' attention … Hakins and Select Travel Service recognized as corporate meeting planning authorities … and program renewal in 2002 for the second Harry Potter/Coca-Cola program Grand Prize trip fulfillment for 200 US families to London and Scotland!