The terms "DMC" (Destination Management Company) and "private concierge" are used interchangeably in a significant proportion of incentive travel briefs, which is the source of a persistent confusion about what each actually provides and what they cost.

The English country house retreat is the most architecturally and programmatically specific form of corporate residential programme available in the United Kingdom, and the least understood by planners who have not used it before.

Lake Como is the most requested Italian destination for board retreats and senior leadership programmes and the most consistently mishandled. The mishandling takes two forms: the large hotel that hosts the group as one of fifteen other corporate groups occupying the property simultaneously, or the villa hire that provides the setting but not the programme.

The Amalfi Coast is one of the three or four most requested incentive destinations in Italy, and one of the most consistently problematic to execute correctly.

Amsterdam is the most visited city in Europe for corporate events and one of the most frequently cited as disappointing by incentive buyers who have been there more than once. The source of the disappointment is not the city — it is the programme formula that has accumulated around it: the canal boat dinner, the Heineken Experience, the Keukenhof day trip, the gala dinner in a warehouse with a DJ.

Belgium receives more MICE visitors than it receives incentive travel visitors, by a large margin. The distinction is significant. The conference and congress market comes to Brussels for the EU institutions, NATO, and the international regulatory bodies whose physical concentration in the capital has made Belgium a permanent fixture on the Central European conference circuit.

The incentive travel industry has spent considerable energy on the wrong question. The question most incentive briefs are structured around — "how do we design a programme that the participants will enjoy?" — is not the wrong question, but it is not the primary one.

San Sebastián (Donostia) is the most requested gastronomic incentive destination in Europe and, by the density of its Michelin-starred restaurants relative to its population, one of the most concentrated fine dining cities in the world.