Familiarization trips are an essential part of destination marketingâ€"being able to move around a travel location to understand its sense of place is vital not only to promoters selling their brand, but also to writers, travel agents, and anyone who will be describing your location to the public.

In the past, a well-executed fam trip was widely considered to be one of the most successful (and cost-effective) promotional tools at our disposal. But as the economy is still shaking off the cobwebs of a recession, promotional budgets aren’t what they used to be.

Although still valuable, fam trips can be expensive to pull off, and their direct impact is typically limited to the size of your trip group. But as new technology like virtual reality grows in popularity, destination marketers now have new tools to reach people, add value, and elevate the fam trip to its highest potential.

The Benefit of a Well-Executed Fam Trip

A good fam trip can do wonders for your location’s visibility. As the name implies, these are opportunities for members of the tourism trade (including travel agents, wholesalers, journalists, tour operators, etc.) to familiarize themselves with what you have to offer, and to walk away with a positive experience they can describe confidently, and in their own words.

Fam trips not only prepare your staff to fully articulate their pitch, but the first-hand media coverage can also benefit the bottom lineâ€"a well-executed fam trip can result in anywhere from a 20 to 50 percent increase in sales.

But It Can Do Better

For all of its benefits, however, a fam trip can come with a hefty price tag. Providing complementary lodgings, meals, activities, and especially travel for even a modest-sized group can add up quickly. And while the long-term benefits to your sales staff is obvious, the loss of productivity resulting from having them away from their desks for days at a time can be a real concern.

The logistics of coordinating a large group of people representing different organizations and interests can also be dauntingâ€"uncooperative weather can dismantle your outdoor activity plans, last-minute cancellations can waste money and impact, and reserving space for trip members means leaving rooms unbooked.

With these challenges in mind, several forward-thinking promoters have begun offering virtual fam trips to accompany the physical experience, using the latest virtual reality technology to expand the reach of the fam trip.

How the Industry is Already Using VR

Virtual experiences have caught on in recent years with higher education, resorts, and real estate professionals as a means to give visitors a sense of immersion and place. These business and institutions are using VR as a means to market to people and drive in-person visits.

For example, the Crystal Coast, one of North Carolina’s premier vacation spots, offers a virtual experience to marketers and travelers that allows them to virtually paddleboard around the Diamond Lady Lighthouse, and engage in other outdoor activities. The experience is shared with prospective guests on the Oculus Rift VR headset and Google Cardboard, an inexpensive platform that uses a viewer’s own mobile phone.

The Value VR Adds to the Fam Trip

Complementing the traditional fam trip with a virtual experience opens a number of doorsâ€"rather than limiting the event to a select few, a VR display of your location can be experienced by every member of your team, on any day of the year. Rather than eating the cost of travel and accommodations for each team member, those valuable marketing dollars can be reinvested elsewhere.

Aside from your team, a professionally produced VR experience provides an additional tool for guest marketingâ€"according to the Pew Research Center, a web site with a 360-degree experience and other interactive media will receive 40 percent more traffic than other sites.

The VR industry is on the cusp of a major boom, projected to be a $30 billion market by 2020. As that technology moves into the mainstream, more and more potential guests will be carrying VR capability in their own pockets; immersive presentations will not be alluringâ€"they’ll be expected. Leveraging virtual experiences into your go-to fam trip might be the best way to stay ahead of the curve.

To learn more how you can use virtual reality to reach and engage your audience, contact YouVisit.