If you are a journalist who covers tourism or travel destinations, anyone involved in site selection for businesses/economic development, or a public relations person who works with clients in the travel and tourism industry, you are all-too-familiar with FAM Tours. The FAM Tour (an abbreviation of “familiarization tour”) has long been a standard-issue tool in the PR professional’s tool belt when marketing or promoting a city, town or tourism destination.
Here’s how a FAM Tour works: A public relations practitioner schedules a number of journalists (preferably writers/broadcasters who cover towns for economic development or tourism and travel) to come to town at the same time. The trip is paid for by the host town or destination being featured by the journalists along with the restaurants, hotels and attractions they will see while they are in town. The 15 to 20 (sometimes more, sometimes less) journalists will then go back and produce stories about their trip – hopefully telling their readers/viewers that the town is amazing and a must-see destination.
While FAM Tours may sound like a great way to showcase a town or destination, there are more than a few gaping holes in this approach. With the rise of the internet and the struggles most newspapers are having, the quality of journalists participating in FAM Tours has dropped dramatically in recent years. Most legitimate media outlets will not permit their reporters to take a free tour – which excludes many high-value media targets right out of the gate. Also, journalists HATE the concept of getting the same exact story as 15 or 20 other journalists – which flies contrary to the entire concept of a FAM Tour.
To make the whole FAM Tour concept even sleazier, many of the large national public relations firms that specialize in FAM Tours now require journalists who want to participate in awesome tours of Aspen, New York City, Orlando, New Orleans, and other travel hotspots to first cover FAM Tours to towns like Des Moines, Canton, Omaha, Chattanooga, etc. This leaves many FAM Tour journalists simply faking interest and tolerating one tour so they can get to the FAM Tour they are truly interested in – and the coverage from these “required” FAM Tours is less than enthusiastic (if they generate coverage at all).
In light of the significant challenges outlined above (real reporters not being permitted to accept free trips and the fact that respected journalists hate the concept in its entirety), public relations “pros” have lowered the bar on what they consider “high value media targets” for their customers. The end result is that many “journalists” who now get invited to FAM Tours (paid for by the client) have little or no audience at all – and the PR “pros” know this from the start. I have worked on FAM Tours (arranged by others) where I was interviewed for TRAVEL STORIES by sports editors from weekly newspapers with circulations below 2,000, where I took bloggers who had 20 to 30 weekly readers to expensive restaurants and hotels (paid for by clients), and where I found myself wining and dining “freelance” journalists who hadn’t published a story in a known publication for years.
The only reason this kind of scam continues is that most clients never do their homework on FAM Tour participants. Public relations firms know that as long as they have breathing bodies on their FAM Tours, the client will believe it’s a success. It is one of the most pervasive and blatant rip-offs in the industry … and anyone who does a little digging can find out what a colossal waste of time and money it is.
Over the past twenty years, I have found that for far less investment, one can target a high-value journalist from a respected media outlet, pitch a story specifically tailored to his/her audience and areas of interest, and bring him/her to town for a one-on-one tour designed entirely around that publication/reporter that results in a FAR more valuable feature story in a respected national media outlet.
A series of large features in high-value media outlets delivers far greater visibility for a client while reducing the cost. And a feature story from a major national media outlet is infinitely more valuable than 15 or 20 stories in tiny local publications or on blogs no one reads. (Clarification: There are truly valuable blogs that have millions of readers – but, like the mainstream media, they typically don’t participate in FAM Tours for the same reasons respected print and broadcast media typically avoid them.)
I have successfully used this approach to attract publications including New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Constitution Journal, Charlotte Observer, USA Today, Parade Magazine, People Magazine, Southern Living, etc. This highly targeted approach also worked to get coverage by MTV Productions, National Geographic Channel, BBC/Channel One, the Travel Channel, ABC News, CNN and Walt Disney Productions. None of these outlets would have had any interest at all in a traditional FAM Tour.
Finally, the real estate market may be struggling, but Realtors are a creative bunch that may have found a solution to the old, tired and no longer viable “traditional” FAM Tour. While “Virtual FAM Tours” already exist, no one really calls them that because they aren’t being used to showcase destinations or towns … they’re used to showcase real estate. Take a look at Home Debuts - a great example of a “Virtual FAM Tour” already in use. Even the federal government provides a virtual tour of the White House, albeit a static execution.
Here are some virtual city tours that are moving in the right direction. They demonstrate the potential for successfully applying this concept. None are strategically on target, but they are proof the concept can actually be executed.
If you Google “virtual city tours”, you will find many other examples. Most have a decided travel & tourism focus. You can also read a thought-provoking piece by The Burghard Group about the potential of Virtual FAM Tours here.
If you are paying for traditional FAM Tours, you should do some investigating right now. Ask who the journalists are, who the outlet is, what the circulation/viewership is, and what they are looking to accomplish by participating in the tour you are paying for. If you don’t believe you are getting a solid return on your investment, why are you doing it?
@Rick – Nice piece and some sound advice. Thank you for referencing my blog post. One additional perspective is that the Economic Development profession also uses FAM tours with site selection consultants (not just with media representatives) as a way to let them physically see the assets a community has available that may be of interest to their capital investor clients. The FAM tour in this case is often an expected (and potentially required) step in the location selection process.
A few quick responses:
1) The word “fam trip” usually refers to trips for travel agents. In the media, we normally use the word “press trip” or “media trip.”
2) It’s true that many PR people don’t do their homework, but that doesn’t mean press trips are useless. It means that poorly-planned press trips that include “non-producers” are useless.
3) There’s a big gap between “blogs that no one reads” and “blogs with millions of readers.” What’s more, blogs are only one small part of the online media landscape. Blogs also suffer from the same weaknesses as weekly newspaper travel sections did back in the heyday of print: (a) A majority of the readers aren’t likely to be thinking about where to go, what do do, and how to spend their money when they’re reading a blog post, and (b) Most blog coverage, like most newspaper coverage, is a perishable commodity.
4) Historically, press trips (and a lot of travel PR in general) have been about building awareness. In the online era, when readers are often researching trips, in-depth “evergreen” coverage can be just as valuable–if not more so–to both the reader and the PR client, because it helps the traveler make a purchase decision. (One of our site’s cruise reviews from 2003 is *still* getting traffic, and we continue to get occasional e-mails from readers who tell us they’ve decided to book a cruise with the cruise line after reading our in-depth review.)
5) The Web is a niche medium. When thinking about outlets, it makes sense to focus on sites (or blogs, if you decide to go the blog route) that reach your target audience. And it doesn’t hurt to look at the “U.S. Demographics” audience data about gender, income level, educational level, etc. at Quantcast.com, which is available free of charge for any site or blog that has an audience of reasonable size in the USA.
Durant –
I completely agree with all of your points. I have been involved in hundreds of FAM Tours (which is actually a term commonly used in PR for media and press tours). Many of them were quite successful for both the client and the media. However, in recent years I have watched (and participated in) many FAM Tours that were a complete waste of time for the media and the client. My primary point was two-fold: (a) Do your homework and make sure you have the right journalists involved in your tour … a blinding glimpse of the obvious to most people, but a point overlooked or ignored by many PR “pros”, and (b) look for alternatives to the traditional FAM Tour when appropriate. I believe virtual tours offer potential, and targeting high-value journalists for one-on-one tours is a proven alternative that also has the benefit of being cost-effective. I sincerely appreciate your feedback! Have a great weekend.
Rick
Rick,
I have been in travel PR for many years, working in-house at the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions (and as of February 2012 I am running my own small PR agency). To Durant’s point, we never referred to a FAM tour, that was indeed for the travel agent market. We always called our destination trips either a press trip or media trip.
I do agree (and that is a given to me) that you absolutely need to do your homework. Research credentials, reach out to editors and to your network for feedback. Even a simple google search can be of great help.
For me, the results have always been more important than the numbers. On group press trips, 5-7 writers is our max. (we only had one exception). Maybe that’s the difference between in-house and an agency? My targets were not “bodies,” they were the end results, meaning the exposure. Plus in general we shared the feedback on all the writers on the trip with our destination clients.
To make sure the itinerary is of interest to all, or at least most of the itinerary, media receives an outline with the invitation. If the program is not of interest, writers can and should say so and decline the invite. There is a dual (and ethical) responsibility here. There also should be free time scheduled as part of the itinerary, so writers can pursue their own story interests.
The reason we started organizing less and less group trips had little to do with the concept or the results. It was just that we had less and less staff to accompany these trips and less and less budget. Contrary to what many media believe, NTO’s have to pay a lot of the costs out of their own pockets. The time of 100% sponsored trips are long gone. To organize a group trip vs a fully sponsored individual press trip, talking hours of labor, in the end does not make much of a difference. Sometimes one individual can take up a lot of your time.
And I always enjoyed hosting them!
Brigitta
Brigitta – Thanks for the response! I too have been involved with some very successful FAM Tours (and, now that you mention it, most of them were much smaller — less than 10 people — than the normal FAM Tours organized in this area. I do considerable travel and tourism work in the Great Smoky Mountains area of Tennessee and North Carolina. As the most visited national park in the United States with approx. 11 million annual visitors, I believe that many of our tourism bureaus and convention & visitors bureaus simply try to do too much with each visit. Thanks again for your insight.
Rick
Hi Rick,
I’ve been on 40 or 50 press trips, mostly writing for print, and I do see a difference now in that bloggers are making up a larger proportion of media guests, though they usually seem pretty credible. I’m rarely on a trip with more than 5 or 6 people though – 20 or more sounds insane. I’d go crazy! Maybe because the trips I’ve been on tend to be smaller, the PR folk have been pretty savvy about who they bring (well, except for troublemakers like me, of course). Anyway I’m sure this post will start a lively discussion …
Carol – Thanks for the great reply. The size of the groups you work with certainly impacts the benefit (or lack of benefit) the tours have — see my response to Brigitta above!
Rick
Rick
I’ve gone from 20-years on staff at a newspaper to freelance travel and food writer, with many a press/media/fam trip along the way. Only once has a press trip been a total wash and this because the client suddenly decided to go cheap and used in-house staff who hadn’t a clue instead of the PR agency that originally planned the trip. Eventually even that will appear somewhere, probably in a collection of what-not-to-do’s.
A good reporter can always find a story – smaller groups with ample time for independent exploration (Brigitta’s were wonderful) are best – and it’s easier than ever to place them. Whereas I and a lot of other print alums used to produce a section front travel story that appeared in print alone and may have reached 50,000 – 500,000 on sunday and the trash on Monday, now our work appears everywhere as we shift angles and audiences. A consumer or great destination piece for one outlet, a food focus to another plus whatever niches we’ve established in websites and blogs, none of which ever go away. As Durant said, we have years-old articles, recommendations and if-you-go’s still being read. And with niche sites you may have fewer readers but those readers are more likely to be truly interested.
Well planned, small group trips can be worthwhile for both sides. Finding outlets for stories is easier than ever. Finding paying outlets is the hard part.
While story placement in high-circulation newspapers looks really impressive, do remember that A) there is no assurance that everyone who subscribes to or buys a paper actually reads the travel pages, while a person who searches the web for a particular destination, hotel, attraction, etc. wants that specific information. B) Also, most papers are discarded or recycled within a week, while post live forever unless the blogger takes them down. And that, in turn, brings us back to A.
Some of the most successful press trips I’ve been on are ones with a mix of writers – national and regional newspapers, print glossies, websites and bloggers. When accepting an invitation, I’ve always been asked for my stats, intended coverage and sometimes target audience. Perhaps not all PRs are so dedicated, but I’ve always had a good experience with them.
Virtual city tours? wow. I can’t see how a tweaked real estate tool can transmit the climate, cuisine, scent, mood or friendliness quotient of a destination. Travel is a sensory experience, something a good writer can express. As PR budgets shrink, dollars might be better spent on writers who have complete control of their own content, can publish when optimal and add to or update multiple times after original publication date.