The Corporate Retreat: An Alaska Adventure.

• Author: BONHAM, NICOLE A.
• Position: Waterfall Group

Corporate shoptalk has moved outside the boardroom, even somewhat off the golf course, into the realm of adventure travel, industry analysts say. In Alaska, that often means mixing business with pleasure over a fly rod or salmon hook.

Likewise, incentive travel, long considered a mainstay of the corporate travel sector, calls for serving up something unique, something otherwise unavailable. Companies use it as a tool to woo a discerning client or reward an employee for a job well done.

To one veteran marketeer, mixing the two sectors--incentive travel and adventure travel--creates a formula for success in Alaska, where hospitality comes easy and adventure is literally around every turn.

The concept has won praise for Ketchikan-based Waterfall Group and its flagship 84-guest Waterfall Resort, the subject of write-ups in Travel & Leisure, Business Week, Sunset and others. So what, specifically, is the winning formula that reels in a loyal client base like auto-makers Ford Motor Co., Toyota and Lexus; Seattle-based distributor Odom of Alaska; beverage and multi-media giant Seagram and others?

For Ketchikan-born Chuck Baird, now the Santa Barbara-based marketing director for Waterfall Group, it's a combination of consistent, personalized and quality service (the incentive p art), plus the natural rush of Alaska (the adventure).

"What I've found after 12 years of marketing for Waterfall is that Alaska itself is a complete incentive destination," Baird says. Before joining Waterfall Group, Baird spent years coordinating destination travel for Sheraton Hotels' Hawaii operations.

"In Hawaii certainly you had the beach, hotels ... but generally speaking you had to create additional things for them to do. I find that Alaska is so unique and has everything there (that) it's naturally incentive, naturally themed. It's not that you have to bring in a lot of props."

On the Rocks

Maybe not a lot of props are needed, but an extra touch of luxury hospitality is what keeps corporate clients coming back year after year, Baird says. Waterfall Group also operates Alaska's Inside Passage Resorts, a venture of a cooperative nature that markets accommodation at a variety of statewide lodges and Alaska-experience affiliates.

He recalls one trip for Ford executives at affiliate Yes Bay Lodge, scenically situated on the Panhandle's pristine Cleveland Peninsula, where the auto company had rented the full 24-guest lodge for a corporate getaway.

To create a lasting...