Pros
Location, company views, state of the art facility, employee centric, good onsite amenities (onsite medical support, workout facility, personal services, and concierge services to name a few. Seemingly philanthropic and offers good employee travel perks/rewards/discounts as a revenue incentive.
Cons
ICE is a heavily commissioned based sales organization at every level. From booking agents for car rentals, hotel stays, cruises, or resort stays through inbound and outbound vacation package sales agents, every division in the company is strategically placed to sell and upsell prospective customers. Although ICE has its own brand of vacations and vacation packages, a large contingent of the employee base represents other large companies (Sears Travel, American Express, RCI Timeshare to name a few) in a 3rd party outsourcing capacity selling vacation packages (cruises and resort stays) and vacation benefit packages (supposed to save customers big dollars across hotels, cruises and resort stays). The problem is that the vacations, vacation packages and vacation benefits sold are extremely over-inflated in value and severely exaggerated in terms of saving significant $$. In most cases the costs of booking through ICE is more expansive then going directly to the hotel, resort, cruise-line, or auto-rental company directly…not to mention sites like Expedia, Travelocity etc., because each booking has a built-in profit margin of a few hundred dollars to ensure a sales commission to the respective booking agent. While there may be instances when the products and services live up to expectation by delivering a cost savings, it is the exception rather than the rule. As far as the vacation packages are concerned, they are really all fluff bundled and sold for thousands of dollars, promised with a complimentary cruise for two and/or resort stay (depending on the package the consumer purchases). The problem is that the "free" or "complimentary" cruise or land vacation(s) bundled into the packages rarely, if ever, covers the cost as represented by the sales agent. Rather the consumer receives certificates that may be applied to a cruise booking or a land vacation but the underlying value of the certificate (at least for the cruise) maxes out at about $750.00 ($375.00 per person). Last time I checked there aren’t many cruises on the market that cost $750.00. This means that once the consumer is ready to book that cruise, it is only at the time of booking that the consumer learns that there is still going to be a very substantial out of pocket obligation to experience their dream vacation for which they have already invested as much as $3,600 for the purchased package. Typical high volume/high pressure sales call center. Associates are encouraged to say whatever is necessary to get the sale to include large scale exaggerations and even full-blown lies (taught during training) about how the products supposedly worked for someone else. These 3rd party stories are all staged (made up) to give customer a false sense of how great the products/services worked for someone else to close the sale.
