Familiarisation trips – or ‘fams’ as they have been affectionately dubbed – are designed to ‘familiarise’ travel agents or tour operators with a destination or a travel product.
The airlines, hotels, tourism boards and other travel providers who spend time, money and effort organising these trips expect bonafide sales staff – those who actually sell travel products over the counter/phone – to attend in the good faith that when they return from the trip they will be armed with the knowledge and skills to sell the product or destination they have experienced.
Or so the story goes – in the real world, well, more specifically, as far as the Middle East’s travel and tourism industry is concerned, this is usually not the case.
I’ve bemoaned the lack of respect for the fam before – and I make no apologies for doing so once again as I have recently received numerous reports from hard-working, but exasperated tourism boards and airlines regarding blatant fam trip abuse.
I specifically refer to travel agency managers sending the wrong people on fam trips -general managers, who have normally had the privilege of travelling extensively compared to frontline staff who are desperate for the knowledge, as well as finance controllers and who knows, maybe even the tea boy?
Each month ATN runs a fam trip piece whereby we interview agents that have taken part in a recent fam. The idea is that the agents (rather than PR or marketing people) can tell other agents what they learned from the trip – selling points and tips, etc.
However, having interviewed a fair number of fam trip participants we have concluded that many are completely inappropriate in that their job function does not involve selling holidays or travel products.
We even spoke to a tariff manager who seemed to enjoy his jolly to Bangkok but had no idea how he would sell the destination, and why would he? At the end of the day, he won’t have to. What a great holiday he had – shame about the compulsory hotel show around eh?
Tourism boards with which I have spoken recently are at the end of their tether.
Some are considering stopping fam trips altogether, while others plan to charge agents a refundable fee to at least ensure their commitment to turning up.
In the travel agent’s defence, it has been well documented, particularly in ATN, that their wages are poor and that fams are an incentive or added bonus, but in the long run, the agency managers who are ultimately to blame for fam trip abuse, will lose out.
If they don’t start investing in training and sending the right people on fam trips, they will end up with an agency full of demotivated and unskilled workers who do not add value to the business or the clients.
Alas, I fear I am describing the fate of many travel agencies already.
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