When people tell their friends that they are looking to a career as a travel counsellor, the usual reaction is "oh, you want to get a lot of free trips". Well, those trips are referred to as "Familiarization Trips" or "Fam Trips" or "Fams". They are not free, nor are they a vacation. Fam trips take time out of a travel counsellor’s work schedule, which means the person is not earning any commission while they are away. But the Return on Investment (ROI) for a travel professional can pay dividends, if the Fam is treated as an investment in learning about—and how --to market that destination. Fams serve as one of the key professional development tools that travel counsellors use to gain intimate knowledge of a destination.
And who said a Fam trip was a holiday-in-disguise? They are hard work. A recent Fam to a Caribbean destination included 4 days of touring, six hotel inspections each day, a three hour marketing session, meetings with attraction and tourism officials, and a grand total of two hours of ‘free’ time during the entire trip.
Fam trips allow travel counsellors the opportunity to visit a destination and then be able to provide first-hand experiential knowledge to their clients. A Fam trip, usually organized by a tour wholesaler or a tourist board, includes a number of features that are not available to a travel professional in a textbook or an online learning program. While these features may vary from trip to trip, they generally include:
- Multiple hotel visits and room visits in each hotel, so the travel counsellor can inform travellers about the of various room categories, as well as provide first hand experience of room amenities, room locations and hotel features. For example, if the brochure says "ocean view" room, can you really see the ocean without fully opening the window and stretching your neck, or is the ocean right outside? Do all the rooms include a coffee maker? How about a safe for valuables? And what about internet connections. Are the rooms clean and fresh or do they have a cheap ‘motel odour’ about them.(you know what I mean).
- Multiple restaurant visits, so the travel counsellor can give suggestions to the client about quality of food, location of restaurant, as well as other features that may be of interest, such as ambiance, entertainment, type of food available, wine list, cost. Are all the restaurants at the all-inclusive included or are there extra costs? Do you have to line up at 8:00 am to reserve one of the restaurants? Is there a dress code enforced or will the client be dining with shirtless men and tube top women?
- Tourist attractions, so the travel counsellor can plan an itinerary for the client or suggest the best way to spend a day of site-seeing or the best places to purchase a product that is associated with the destination. If the client collects wood carvings and you have been to Mombasa on a Kenya Fam, can you suggest 2-3 places for the client to shop?
The term "travel agent" implied for years that the travel seller was the agent of a supplier. Today's travel counsellor has access to many suppliers, many products and an incredible array of options to offer the client. The job is not one of an order taker--the job of a travel counsellor is to "counsel" the client and give advice about all the travel options available. Therefore they need to know about these options, and nothing beats first-hand knowledge.
Travel counsellors understand that in the year 2010, travellers can access a lot of information on their own but in many cases, the traveller starts to suffer from information overload. If five different sources are saying five different things about the same hotel--which one does the client believe? Who is going to sort out the confusion for that client? The solution is YOU. The next time a Fam opportunity arises, grab it, take lots of business cards, your digital camera, pen and paper and get ready to meet, greet, learn and then earn more money when you return!
-Steve Gillick, President and COO,
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