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INTERVIEW: Transforming workplace benefits with gamified wellbeing and travel rewards

Paul Kelbie, co-founder at incentifi, discusses how the platform combines travel savings with gamified wellbeing rewards to transform workplace benefits.

Interview
5 min read
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Paul kelbie co founder incentifi
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Paul Kelbie and James Barrington-Madders, co-founders of incentifi, will soon launch their behavioural workplace rewards platform to offer employers a low-cost subscription that combines members-only travel savings with a gamified health and wellbeing rewards system. Employees can save on travel immediately while earning commission towards future trips by building healthier habits.

Workplace Journal speaks with Kelbie to discuss how its platform will transform workplace benefits.

Can you share a bit about your personal journey and how your early experiences shaped your vision for incentifi?

I ran a specialist recruitment‑to‑recruitment (R2R) business, building long relationships with clients and managing teams across London and Manchester. The pandemic shut that business down and forced a rethink – what looked like a crisis became an opportunity. During lockdown I trained as an independent travel agent initially to save money on my own frequent breaks and quickly started booking for clients, including saving one client several thousand pounds on a Mykonos villa. That direct experience – seeing how much travel meant to people and how practical savings could be – combined with my recruitment background where incentive culture drove results to form the foundation of incentifi.

Meeting my business partner, James Barrington‑Madders who runs the travel and hospitality management company, London 2 Vegas, while delivering incentive travel for clients cemented the pivot from a labour‑intensive concierge model to a scalable subscription platform linking travel and wellbeing.

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What did you learn from your time in recruitment and luxury travel that influenced the way you approached employee wellbeing and rewards?

Recruitment taught me the mechanics of incentive‑driven cultures – sales teams respond strongly to experiences and tangible rewards. Travel taught me the emotional weight of experiences: holidays are aspirational, memorable, and something people purposefully work toward. Combining those lessons meant designing a benefit that is emotionally motivating travel rather than transactional insurance or tiny coupons.

Trust built from long client relationships in recruitment also showed us we could sell a different kind of employee programme. Companies that trusted us for placements trusted us to design meaningful incentive travel, which made it easier to test a subscription model for employees.

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Many wellbeing programmes fail to engage employees meaningfully. In your view, what’s structurally broken about traditional approaches?

Too many programmes centre on products people do not feel excited about for example, insurance, which has negative connotations because you only use it when sick or they offer limited, low‑appeal inventory leftover travel inventory that no one really wants. Others rely on episodic campaigns – one‑week challenges – rather than encouraging daily, compounding habits.

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Engagement often depends on big marketing spends like consumer travel platforms, so benefits quickly fade from attention. Structurally, the problem is misalignment: employers offer benefits that don’t connect emotionally to employees’ real motivations or don’t create ongoing behaviour change.

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What makes incentifi different from other employee reward and wellbeing platforms on the market?

incentifi combines several things other providers do separately: members‑only travel pricing, gamified health challenges, and a rewards wallet – tied together. So every user gets access to a closed user group pricing on travel, with a huge inventory of three million hotels and properties. 

On top of that, users earn points from day‑to‑day wellbeing activities, steps, challenges, and planned future features like cognitive games. From there, members redeem those Points against exclusive travel rates and earn Coins back with every booking, and those Coins can then be used towards future travel or digital gift cards, across 250 plus partners. It is a self-funding behavioural rewards loop that focuses on aspirational outcomes holidays and experiences rather than insurance or small transactional discounts.

How do you ensure incentifi is accessible and valuable for all employees, not just those with senior roles or premium packages?

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Accessibility is built into pricing and product design. The target employer price is modest – roughly £4 to £10 per user per month depending on scale – so companies can offer the benefit broadly rather than restrict it to senior staff. Crucially, every employee immediately gets members‑only travel rates regardless of whether they actively earn points, so value is instant. Because travel savings are meaningful on larger purchases, family breaks can cost thousands, even small percentage savings are noticeable and appreciated across the employee base. The platform’s broad inventory and personalisation mean it’s relevant to many different budgets and travel styles.

With high pressure and rising sick leave among UK workers, how does incentifi address these challenges in a practical way?

incentifi is designed as a preventative, habitual wellbeing tool rather than a post‑issue fix. Encouraging daily movement steps, challenges and broader wellbeing activities helps improve physical and mental health over time. A walk isn’t a cure for serious mental‑health conditions, but regular activity, time in nature, and small daily habits compound and benefit overall wellbeing.

The tangible payoff – earning commission back toward desirable travel – creates sustained motivation to adopt healthier routines, which can reduce long‑term sick days linked to chronic conditions and mental health. For employers, even a modest reduction in absence suggests single‑digit percentage improvements can equate to substantial savings.

What’s next for incentifi?

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Short term: launch in the UK – the app has just been submitted and approved on the App Store. We have opened our waitlist for foundering members which we are having a lot of traction with. Our focus is to secure early customers, collect real testimonials and case studies showing both money saved and measurable improvements in activity. Our medium-term goals are to expand into international markets with high travel and wellness demand and work with multinational employers to scale quickly. And ultimately, our long-term goal are that we want to demonstrate measurable reductions in sick days and real cost savings for employers while growing a global user base.

The overall goal is to encourage, not force, healthier habits and help people create memorable experiences – saving them money and improving wellbeing in the process.

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