 Looking to attract more meeting planner business? First things first, let's attract the meeting planners to your destination. Today we're going to talk about best practices on planning a familiarization trip. Hey it's Leanne from LeanneColderwood.com and Conference Direct and I've had the great privilege of attending some really well-planned fams over the years and so those DMOs really were the inspiration for this post. I'm well executed fam for meeting planners can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars of new business, potentially even millions of dollars of new business. But in order for meeting planners to want to bring their delegates to your destination, that meeting planner familiarization trip needs to go off without a hitch and it needs to leave an impression. So these two, these tips do a little bit of both. It's logistical things that you can do to make sure that it goes off swimmingly well and so meeting planners want to return and have that same logistical successful experience when planning their own meeting. But you also want to make it personal and you want to leave an impression on that planner so that they think of your destination very fondly when they're starting to think about future destinations for their meetings. So here we go. Tip number one, make sure you have one point of contact for the meeting. There's likely a team of people helping you with this familiarization trip, but having one point of contact makes it really easy for the meeting planner to get information back and forth to you and get ready for this trip during their busy schedule. Tip number two, look at your familiarization trip timing. In fact, there's one destination in here in Canada that I would love to visit, but their fam trip takes place at the same time every year and I just simply can't go because I have other commitments during that exact same time. The other thing you might want to consider if you're going to host your fam over one of your city's popular festivals, it's a great idea to do it during that really vibrant time in your destination. But make sure that you outline to your meeting planners what it means for their meetings if they also visit during that busy time. Chances are their room rates at those hotels are going to inflate because it's during this festival season. But it's still a great chance to show off the city, show off the energy, just ensure you're honest with your delegates about what happens if they bring it during the festival time or outside the festival time. Tip number three, have a strong and confident vetting process. What I mean by that is there's a lot of casual meeting planners out there that may not look at this opportunity as an education based experience, but rather they look at it as a free vacation. You know that you're out there, you've met them, I've met them, they're out there and we want to make sure that doesn't happen to you because you're investing a lot of dollars into your fam trip. So ensure that your vetting process is very clear and it really confirms the types of meeting planners that you want to attract to your destination. Tip number four, a pre-fam survey. Now most of the fams I've gone on have had these surveys, so you guys are already doing a great job of getting the surveys out there. Make sure your survey includes questions about the programs themselves, including size, demographics, even time of year. And then when they arrive on site for the fam, you're able to speak directly about that program and offer that meeting planner some insights based on their program that maybe they wouldn't think of because they're not as familiar with your destination as they are. Tip number five, work collaboratively. Now although services and hotels and venues in one destination are essentially in competition with one another, the familiarization trip is not the time to be competitors. This is the time to really come together and attract the meeting planners to the destination themselves and then start to look at ways of attracting them to your particular hotel or service. Tip number six, showcase the unique. Now this would seem like an obvious one where you're going to show off the strengths of your destination, but ensuring you do that as it relates to the meeting objectives that you may have uncovered with that pre-fam survey. In fact for meeting planners themselves, I did a blog post on how meeting objectives drive the destination. If you're interested in that, you can check that out here, but it's encouraging planners to ensure that they have their goals and objectives outlined as they consider destinations for their program. So you as a destination, you can also do that in turn and help them along that way. Number seven, the itinerary. Of course meeting planners love itineraries. They love calendars. They love lists. You need to make sure that it's complete down to the dress code, the expected weather conditions, what they do the second they step off the plane at the airport right up until they step back onto that plane at the end of the familiarization trip. Make sure you incorporate some downtime into your itinerary. We're dealing with a lot of busy planners here and they're going to need some time to absorb all the things that they've learned and how it's going to parlay into their programs, but they also just need to touch base with their offices or with their clients to ensure that nothing's fallen off the rails while they took some time away to visit your destination. I did a blog post on how to work with busy third party planners. You can find that video and blog post up here as well and it might show you a few more things that third party meeting planners are thinking about, especially when they're away from the office. And finally, a post fam debrief. Similar to the pre fam survey. Now you want to see if your destination lines up with their goals and objectives for their meetings. Ask them, do you think our destination would be a good fit for your meetings? Lead them down that road and ensure that they have all the information available to make educated decisions after the fam is over. Surely there are some best practices that I have missed here and I want to hear from you. Will you let myself in the community know some of the best practices you have when planning your fam trip for your destination? We want to share this information collaboratively so that we can all up our game and provide the best possible experience for our meeting planning community. These tips are a reflection of what I've experienced over the years, but there's tons of ways that you can personalize the fam trip to your attendees. The key to a successful fam is for it to be planned and executed to perfection so that meeting planners know when they visit your destination that their meeting plan meeting is going to go off without a hitch as well. For more tips on how to attract meeting planners attention, hop on over to liankulderwood.com and you can download the popular how to attract a meeting planners attention worksheet right from the homepage. Thanks for watching. Have a great week and we'll see you soon. Bye for now.