FAM tours, or Familiarization tours, have long been a component of yearly marketing plans for destinations. FAM tours involve inviting a group of tourism professionals to your destination and giving them a concentrated, fast paced tour of your city or region. The tours are developed to help these people see as much as possible in a reasonable amount of time and often run from early morning until late at night. Destinations strive to impart the flavor of their location, show some highlights and an overview of lodging facilities, with the ultimate goal of bringing in new business from these efforts.
I have been involved on both sides of the FAM world. As a corporate meeting planner back in the late 90’s, we were wined and dined and seemed to have gifts placed in our rooms at least twice a day. More recently, as a receptive tour operator, we enjoyed the camaraderie of the group, but were always gently reminded that this was a business trip. We had quizzes on places we had visited the day prior, as well as follow up emails from the hosts, asking for our business. FAM coordinators have definitely learned to start looking for ROI from their attendees.
As a staff member at a DMO, I was involved in the planning and execution for FAM tours aimed at Travel Writers, Motorcoach tour operators, and international tour operators and receptive operators. Each group has different needs and quirks, such as travel writers who put you two hours behind schedule because they have to stop and take pictures every 15 minutes, group tour operators who might be using your FAM as a free vacation, and international professionals who think we Americans eat too early and too fast – dinners go until 11 pm!
However, they have always been an effective way to show off the destination. And secondly, when you are hosting a FAM, you get a chance to develop a personal relationship with your guests. That is as valuable as the site inspections. There is also collaboration between attendees as they talk about ways to put together tours to your destination and share ideas. All the work you put into to hosting a FAM usually pays off; you are now a trusted source to the tour operators or writers and they will feel comfortable calling you with questions or advice.
But in these days of Trip Advisor and other online resources, are FAM’s still necessary? Most tour operators and meeting planners have very limited time to be out of the office. Neil Salerno, of Hotel Marketing Coach wrote this article about the fact that meeting planners have been leaning towards online site inspections instead of FAM’s. He lists some great ideas for hotels to consider for their websites if they are catering to the lucrative meeting market. Hotels looking to interest the group tour market would do well to add group tour friendly information to their websites as well. Another great idea- adding a Trip Advisor widget to your website so people can look at your Trip Advisor reviews without leaving your site. Bad reviews on Trip Advisor you don’t want people to see? That’s another topic for another post.
So in 2010, FAM’s are still a viable way to educate potential business partners on your destination. The key is to make it worth their time- and all your efforts. Please send me your stories on how you make your FAMs successful – I’ll share your ideas with all my readers.
Tourism in the Finger Lakes, NY State and Beyond 
“Another great idea- adding a Trip Advisor widget to your website so people can look at your Trip Advisor reviews without leaving your site. Bad reviews on Trip Advisor you don’t want people to see? That’s another topic for another post.”
I agree with most of your post except this part – why put uncontrollable content on your site?
The widget is packed with links to TripAdvisor which ENCOURAGE visitors to leave your site, leading them to links to your competitors on TA!
I wrote Neal Salerno regarding this comment and here is his response:
It’s a fact that most travelers will check out comments made about a hotel on TripAdvisor before they travel. Would you prefer that ALL such travelers go to Trip Advisor to view comments made about a particular hotel OR allow many of these travelers to see these comments on the hotel’s website without a driving need to go the TripAdvisor website itself?
The TA widget should be built to link to TA comments posted on the hotel site itself, it shouldn’t link to TripAdvisor. See this example: http://www.bellevuehilton.com
Hope this satisfies your concern.
Neil Salerno
I’m not concerned at all. However, in response I would say that :
1. The claim “It’s a fact that most travelers will check out comments made about a hotel on TripAdvisor before they travel” is interesting – is that “fact” based on an independent survey or is it is wishful thinking? Bear in mind that TA is much less well known outside the USA.
2. If potential customers are going to visit TA and view comments about you, fine. But if they are on your site already why risk losing them? Once they click a link from your site to TA then simple curiosity will encourage them to check out other hotels – unless you’re top of the listings, you risk losing them. And only one hotel can be top of the list.
I’m not alone in my views – I”ve checked around and I see certain hotel chains have expressed similar reservations in blogs etc. Not many seem to use it.