Fourteen years ago, MeetingNews in a front-page story on fam-trip abusers revealed a con artist and supposed meeting planner named Harvey Siamon as one of the industry's most notorious offenders.
Uncovered from a confidential list of abusers created by the International Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus, Siamon, along with his accomplice wife, for 25 years allegedly swindled countless CVBs of free trips by operating under several aliases and claiming to represent a half-dozen organizations.
The widespread abuse by Siamon and other scammers who traveled the country and even around the globe on fam trips led to an IACVB initiative to crack down on phony planners.
As reported in the October 1992 MN article, the CVB trade organization and its 400 members worked closely to compile a list of suspected freeloaders. The IACVB sent warning letters to some suspects seeking credentials and meetings history. It even considered reporting them to their state attorneys general, as well as the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service under tax and mail fraud statutes.
While it is unclear how long the IACVB program lasted, the organization, today known as Destination Management Association International, no longer maintains a list of fam-trip abusers, according to Rob Stern, its director of information services. "We leave it up to our member destinations to do their own screening," said Stern.
DMAI does maintain the MINT (Meeting Industry NeTwork) database, which stores detailed information on 32,000 past meetings from 16,000 organizations. More than 150 destination management organizations voluntarily furnish records of events held in their cities; CVBs can use MINT to verify the authenticity of planners at least the ones that are in the database.
Bureaus today, with huge dollars at stake in potential meeting revenue and working under tighter budgets, are more diligent in conducting due diligence to make sure their fam participants are well qualified and likely to bring business.
For instance, Wendy Surkan, manager of meetings and convention sales for Tourism Vancouver, said her warning flags go up whenever a fam-trip applicant doesn't provide a Request For Proposal and meeting specs in a timely manner. The bureau always requests a detailed meetings history, with past cities, hotels and room rates. It also does background checks on planners using the MINT database, which is accessible online.
While Tourism Vancouver gets involved in fam trips conducted by the city's hotels, it has held fewer fams on its own, typically opting instead to hold one-on-one, customized site inspections with clients who've submitted a detailed RFP. "If they're here for a weekend and want to do some sightseeing as well, that's fine, but it's a big financial investment and we want to make sure buyers are qualified," said Surkan.