What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 17 August 2015

Welcome to another week and rather than continue our series on new hotel openings, we thought it was timely to talk about the whole issue of Fam trips and what constitutes a good one. Additionally which invitations should you accept and which shouldn't you?  For the uneducated amongst you, fam trips or familiarisation trips are a great way to discover new venues and to really get a grip on potential new venues for any new enquiries that might come your way. 

Along with many other agencies, we get a bit inundated here at Cloud 9 Towers, with invitations to all sorts of open days, weekends, lunches, dinners, breakfasts, excursions and lots of opportunities to explore far flung destinations abroad.

Getting the balance right between having enough staff in the office to cover our workload but also ensuring we use these experiences as an education can be a bit tricky - and where we can, we also want to try and convert business at some point so that we do actually deliver a return on the investment that is made on us. We don't want to be known as Fammer Scammers! That's not an official term but we love it!

For example, Paula went on a great trip at the back end of 2014 to Amsterdam with Accor Hotels, but it was only this last month that we managed to get some business in two of the hotels that featured as part of the trip.

 

Fam's are also a great way to connect with our agents and sometimes this can be equally as interesting as its always useful to discover just how other agents are doing, and how they approach the various issues that sometimes arise in this business of ours.

It's fair to say that if we wanted, we could probably be at something or other almost every weekend of the year, and the number of invites we have to turn down by far outweighs those that we accept. 

A client of ours in the Travel Industry regular takes agents away and its always interesting to hear stories about the trips and just how badly some of the guests behave on these trips - despite the fact they are fully hosted and paid for. 

Unfortunately, we have also witnessed this here as on some trips we have noticed both a distinct lack of manners and grumbles about hotel rooms, travel arrangements and even really petty stuff such as having to buy the odd drink or cover extras like newspapers. It never fails to amaze us just how much some people take these invitations for granted and we have a strict policy here when it comes to fams.

We only accept those when we think we may actually have a chance at getting some business for the property, destination or region. We always make sure we are on time and genuinely interested in the show rounds, be a hotel, venue or area. It doesn't matter whether we are seeing 17 different categories of hotel bedrooms in a single hotel, we maintain our enthusiasm. We tweet and put it out there on social media, both in advance, during and afterwards and we always, always, always, thank our hosts and the venues included for the wonderful experience. It is after all just good manners.

And, we only go if we have the time to do it!

Judy Allen wrote a great book called Event Planning Ethics and Etiquette: A Principled Approach to the Business of Special Event Management and it has a great chapter on Fams with the odd horror story thrown in for good measure, but its a must on this subject.

 Virtual Fams are a great idea if you don't have time but want to get a feel for a venue and Meet Pie have a great online destination reference tool for event planners.  Containing all the relevant data needed for meetings and incentive travel organisers to build an event programme, Virtual Fam Trip is constantly updated to provide necessary real time information for event planners - from dates of public holidays to visa requirements, meeting venues to local destination management companies, team-building to transportation, weather conditions to restaurants plus useful additional links and more. In this fast-moving world, Virtual Fam Trip gives you everything you need to research your next event location without even leaving your desk, allowing you to respond to the most demanding brief quickly and efficiently.

So, what's our Fam diary looking like? Well, Carol has just returned from a rather lovely visit to Ardencote Manor in Claverdon, Warwickshire. Over the years the Ardencote has evolved from a family home to an award winning Hotel and Country Club offering unrivalled facilities and excellent customer service. It's more a resort property these days with a Spa, Leisure Club and all sorts of really great facilities and its fair to report that Carol loved it and is already trying to interest clients in the venue for their next event.

Rubina is off to Scotland with Gleneagles next month, and Paula is off this coming weekend with Accor to enjoy Chester Races Ladies Day and three of the Mercure Hotels in the North West. And we have just signed up our new signing for IBTM in November, which includes a fam to Madrid....

So, that's it for this week, enjoy and we'll see you next week!