National Ski Council Federation

FAM Break Out Group Objectives

What is a FAM?

A “FAM” is a sponsored familiarization trip for trip leaders or club/council officers, with the anticipation of future business. Sponsors may include resorts, tour operators, departments of tourism and other potential service suppliers.

Goal

  • To improve the effectiveness of FAMs for both sponsors and participants.
  • To develop a document of good practice guidelines to avoid abuse of FAMs.

Action Items

  • Develop FAM guidelines for distribution to the Council/Clubs and Industry.
  • Develop or consolidate currently availableFAM Trip Evaluation Forms that FAM Trip participants can use to rate their experiences. A simple 1-10 rating scale was suggested/

Outline for Guidelines

Invitation

  1. Who develops the Invitation?
  2. Tour Operator.
  3. Resort
  4. Tourism Department
  5. Council/Club
  6. Trip Leader
  7. Who Receives Invitation?
  8. Qualified council or trip officer
  9. Suggest criteria to establish qualifications
  10. Key trip officer
  11. FAM Trips may include invited “incentive trip participants” or others that require updated knowledge related to the product.This may include trip officers for a trip that has already been booked and allows the opportunity to negotiate details and pricing with local service suppliers for activities and functions.
  12. Qualifications
  13. Key Decision Maker
  14. Skier/Non-skier
  15. Intent to return with group within 3-years. For councils or large clubs, this may be extended to a 5-year window.
  16. Payment of minimal participation fee
  1. RSVP.
  2. Recipients should acknowledgement the invitation
  3. Thanks!
  4. No thanks!
  1. Provide qualification, if “no.”

Expectations

  1. Council/Clubexpectations, from the Industry

1.Financial

a.The participation cost must be reasonable. The cost of a FAM Trip is generally a personal expense of the attendee.

b.The sponsors should be clear as to what expenses will be covered and which will be the responsibility of the participant.

2. Scheduling

a.Sufficient advance notice. Many participants must schedule personal time-off to attend a FAM

3. Inclusions

a. A clear, objective based, list of inclusions should be provided.

i.Sponsors may consider providing a pre-FAM survey to prospective participants with their invitation, requesting information at to what the attendees’ objectives are and what they would like to see included in the FAM Trip.

ii.It is helpful if the resort can supply collateral and an agenda to participants, at least two weeks prior to the FAM Trip. This may be easily accomplished with supplier web links embedded in the agenda.

b.Permit free time to wander around on-site, check things out or just “down-time” to call home, check messages or “chill in the spa”. Suggestions provided include the following:

i.A minimum of 2 hours of downtime during each full day of activities

ii.A night or an afternoon off while on-site.

c.Site tours and exposure to the resort products; including the skiing/riding experience, property tours, local restaurants and service suppliers, etc., and exposure to what is available for non-skiers/riders, on-site and locally

  1. Honesty & Integrity
  2. Proper representation of their organization, the services that can be supplied and by whom.

5.Suitable media and collateralon-site. It is especially important to make promotional collateral available, i.e.: posters, a CD image gallery, DVD, brochures, etc.

6.A list of the FAM Trip sponsors and lodging properties along with contact information for each

7.Name tags for each participant, also listing the organization they are representing and their title. This is helpful for the sponsors as well.

  1. Once the FAM has commenced, a document with contact details of each participant (with participant approval)
  2. If accommodations will be supplied, brochures or a web link to the property would be helpful, in advance of the trip.This may be a web link in the body of the agenda.
  3. Follow up after the FAM to determine what else may helpful to sell the destination
  4. Provide a post FAM Trip Report of the participant(s) and an evaluation of attendees to the participant’s parent organization (i.e.: council for a club). This is where the standardized forms will be essential!
  5. The number of participantson the FAMs should be such thatit is manageable and each participant has ample access to resort/property representatives to learn as much as possible about the surroundings.
  6. Industry Expectations, from the Councils/Clubs

1.Financial

a.Appreciate thatthe resort’s/tour operator’shave budget constraints.

b.Accept that the resorts have scheduling conflictsand seasonal constraints, and recognize that often the itinerary is modified “on-the-fly” to present additional opportunities or to balance ROI.

2.Scheduling

a.Participants – must accept that the resorts have scheduling conflicts and seasonal constraints, and recognize that often the itinerary is modified “on-the-fly” to present additional opportunities

3.Honesty & Integrity

a.Proper representation of their organization and the intent to bring a group within three years

b.Appropriately represented

i.Participants should be a trip leader, officer, or a“center of influence“ in the organization they are representing

c.Recognize and accept that the sponsors may have a “no spouse” or “no significant other” rule.This could be case by case basis, or perhaps extensions of a FAM could be offered to bring out “others” at an additional cos.

4.Participation in all scheduled activities

5.Open to experience new products and services

6.Collateral

a.Business cards, newsletters and other collateral from participant’s organizations; enough to give to each sponsor and to other participants if desired.

b.A preliminary Request for Quotation so the sponsors can see what is important to your organization; again, enough to give to each sponsor and to other participants if desired.

7.Follow up with honest feed back (positive & constructive)

8.A post FAM Trip Report

a.Consider developing standardized forms.

i.Currently existing forms will be reviewed.

9.Share the report with other council clubs and the federation

a.There has been discussion relevant to the Ski Federation setting up and maintaining an online database of club and council trips; to include a list of destinations, trip reports and FAM Trip Reports.

10.Post FAM trip plans for return with a group

Evaluation Forms

Council/Clubs and Industry

Product/supplier evaluation and participant/organization evaluation -- This team will request and evaluate existing evaluation forms and suggest “good practice” documents for this purpose.

Other

We talked abut sharing the subject documents with the federation and parent councils, so we may identify participants that repeatedly abuse FAM opportunities.

We also discussed filtering FAM Trip offerings through the parent organizations. Trip leaders, clubs, councils, resorts and tour operators maintain diverse relationships with each other for many reasons. I (George) don’t feel that we are in a position to track and police this effort and would be in favor of the sponsors and participants simply notifying the parent organization(s) when a FAM trip opportunity is offered, or taken, and leaving it at the discretion of that parent organization to decide what to do with the information.

We must recognize that the evaluations will not always be positive in nature. We should decide in advance how to best address negative feedback. Regardless of how successful a FAM is, or is not, in the eyes of the participants, the resorts will have spent a fair amount of money and effort on the activities. The standardized evaluation forms could ensure that participants supply “soft negative” feedback where necessary. All criticism should remain civilized and constructive, rather than demeaning and destructive.In other words, negative feedback might come in the form of “perhaps they should consider offering...,” as opposed to “the FAM was not worthwhile, because…”

We will need to consider privacy issues with publishing this information, as well.

National Ski Council Federation

FAM Break Out Committee Team Members

MTS_NSCF_FAM_active_a1 of 510/30/2018

Peter Albro, Sales Manager

Vail Resorts

Janet Sellers, Group Sales Manager

SunlightMountain Resort

Lisa Beregi, Secretary

NSCF

Barbara Clarke, Vice President, Sales

Ski.com

Betty Emery, President

MetropolitanDetroit Ski Council

Dennis Heffley, President

Bay Area Ski Council

George Krampetz, Trips Director (CHAIR)

Connecticut Ski Council

Bonnie West, Webmaster

NSCF

André Grupa, Director

Ski Alpine Xperience

866766-9359

Véronique Burgon, Marketing and Partnership (PENDING)

Ministére du Tourisme Québec

Thank you to our team members for providing their invaluable input to this effort. Thanks also tomany of our other industry partners for supporting this effort with their comments and suggestions.

This document will continue to evolve with additional input, evaluation forms and with our additional experience.

MTS_NSCF_FAM_active_a1 of 510/30/2018