Our first 2025 members-only “Beyond Borders” event went live in late March, with the event emphasizing the importance and power of human connections in incentive travel to overcome challenges.
Every quarterly Beyond Borders session, managed by the SITE HQ team, gives members exclusive access to a unique opportunity to form new connections and take advantage of SITE’s global knowledge base.
Each 2025 virtual event is hosted by a fellow SITE member interested in sharing their expertise with our community. All SITE members are then invited to tune in for an hour of engaging discussions and activities to put learnings into practice, while also making new industry contacts or deepening existing relationships.
SITE South America member Jose Navarrete used his wealth of experience to lead March’s discussion. Jose has worked in Switzerland, the US, and Ecuador, and tapped into his current role as president of Pushaq S.A., a DMC in Ecuador, to walk Beyond Borders participants through a virtual crisis management exercise.
Jose came prepared with several case study examples for participants to work through focused on the power of global staffing, emphasizing that collaborative and innovative approaches are what make the incentive travel industry flourish. Jose split call participants into breakout groups and challenged each group to brainstorm a creative solution to a challenge he presented them with, on the spot.
After about 20 minutes of group time, Jose called the group back to vote on which breakout had produced the most original solution to the problems at hand — which ranged from scenarios like losing communications while on a remote jungle-based incentive, to bad weather disrupting arrival manifests.
While the solutions proved just as wide-ranging as the hypothetical scenarios groups faced, each team’s work perfectly reflected the importance of soft skills in incentive travel: including teamwork, adaptability, and quick decision-making & analytical abiliites.
Jose wrapped the March Beyond Borders session by presenting a real world geopolitical crisis his team at Pushaq had previously managed, providing a concrete example of just how important these skills are when put into actual practice.
Our thanks to Jose and to our first batch of Beyond Borderes attendees for making this first event a success — with plenty of opportunities for more members to get involved throughout the rest of 2025, too.
Applications are open through May 9 for anyone interested in hosting our Q2 2025 Beyond Borders session, with all members also invited to save the date for this second event taking place on June 27.
Watch your inbox for a registration link in upcoming editions of “inSITE,” or check SITE’s LearnHub for all of our virtual event programming.
