WHICH DO YOU PREFER DURING A SITE VISIT OR FAMTRIP?
A more relaxed schedule that gives me free time to experience the destination or venue on my own
32% A full schedule that
maximizes my time in the destination or venue
68%
want to see other things. I would want to walk around by myself and see what was really going on, how comfortable I felt walking in the area.” Savery, whose association membership is
CERTIFICATION MADE POSSIBLE
80-percent female, makes it a point to note how safe she personally feels around the convention center, hotels, and restaurants. When performing such solo field research, Kraus recommends “going incognito” to ask hotel staff about whether the area around the property — and any other event venues you’ll be using — is safe. “Staff mem- bers are very forthcoming,” she said, “if they don’t know you are part of the group.” Ahaesy said: “Another thing to look for [is] security. Do
you have to show your room key [when entering the hotel]? It may be hard to require this in a resort, but in a down- town hotel, certainly.”
Luxe Justification Besides safety, there’s another kind of discomfort that can arise: when hosts lay on the wining and dining too thick. It’s a natural outgrowth of this type of visit — you have to eat, after all, and you want to experience everything a destination has to offer your attendees — but nonetheless this still can evoke the dreaded AIG Effect. For the most part, planners interviewed by Convene agreed that, while they’re treated well by hotels and destinations, fam trips are not as ostentatious as they’ve been in the past. “Slowly, a lot of the garbage is going away,” said Gregg
Lapin,CMP, director of convention and meeting services for the American Osteopathic Association. “One thing our industry has to be very careful of is, if you’re going to start calling attention to yourself, you need to be prepared for what people are going to see.” Wintz agrees, but for a different reason. “I think a lot of
people have wisely scaled back [wining and dining on fam trips],” she said. “As much as anything, I think it’s for health
reasons.We’re certainly all treated nicely, but you are talking to road warriors—we don’t need to eat three meals a day.” On the other hand, if your meeting happens
to be particularly high-end or VIP-filled, an upscale trip can be appropriate. “I’ve been on some fams [that seemed lux- urious],” Sparks said, “but I think it was kind of geared toward the business I had.” Clements is inclined to split the difference. “I don’t think
fams are too lavish,” she said. “They do a nice job of bal- ancing it out. Meeting planners are treated pretty well by hotels. As far as that, [hotels and destinations] do want to show their very best aspects.”
Looking Out for No. 1 The key to all of this — determining not just whether the wining-and-dining aspects of a trip are appropriate, but also whether a destination or venue is a good fit for your meeting — lies in keeping who you’re there for at the forefront of your thoughts. “You want to have your attendee group in mind,” Lapin said. “Some are conferences that people pay to attend; some are board and affiliate meetings. But all of the time you want people to feel they are getting something worthwhile.” Savery puts a humorous spin on it. “I don’t want to be
in a 10-star hotel, because my attendee is not going to be in a 10-star hotel,” she said. “I have requested for a city to take me out of a certain hotel and put me in another hotel. I need to see what my attendee will see, not what I would see if I’m richand famous.”
Hunter R. Slaton is a senior editor of Convene. The CMP (Certification Made Possible) Series is sponsored by Tourisme Montréal,www.tourisme-montreal.org.