Hey All,
This is a great time to chat about “FAMs” and how HPN approaches them. As you all know we are a third party started by guys who “hated” third parties.
One of the thing hotels dislike about third parties are the” shrimp eaters”, people who don’t book your hotel but avail themselves of FAMs, free rooms for vacations etc etc. That is not our brand and we are not those guys.
Part of the value that we get from hotels is that they know when we are interacting with them it’s on real business and we will not abuse their largess for freebies. I can tell you as a statement of fact that in the last 5 years the only people I have asked to leave the company have been ones who abused FAMS and freebies. It’s not our culture and abuse in this area damages all of our ability to drive value for our clients. In fact, it’s self-policing, the hotels know our corporate position and when they see somebody breaking the line so to speak more often than not we are alerted.
The basic rule is you don’t go on a FAM if you don’t have current or very real potential business for a destination. I know there are the occasional “educational” FAMs but attendance on these should be few and far between and if you haven’t hit at least $500k-1 mill booked yet your attendance should be nonexistent.
BK