“There is a company level trend on the market to cut expenses as much as possible and find less expensive solutions to continue providing certain benefits to employees. Thus, companies offer gift tickets instead of Easter and Christmas bonuses, and holiday tickets instead of holiday bonuses, as these are not subject to taxation,” the Reward Info Serv Manager of the Hay Group advisory company, Alina Popescu, said.
To a certain extent, this strategy maintains the purchasing power of employees, essential for consumption and a gradual exit from the crisis, according to businesspeople. “I believe that the state cannot replace the private sector and, in order to relaunch consumption, in the context of the crisis, people’s money should be left in their pockets,” the owner of the Mobexpert furniture company, Dan Sucu, said.
Accor Services Romania, the local subsidiary of the largest company on the service ticket market, said that the number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) offering such tickets to their employees has increased recently. “Increasingly more SMEs are realizing that meal tickets are a way of cutting salary-related costs, while preserving the purchasing power of employees,” the Marketing Manager of Accor Services Romania, Iulian Alexe, said.
