Like incentive meetings, fam trips — those hospitality tours to showcase hotels and locations — are undergoing an extreme makeover.  What’s hot now:  education sessions for meeting planner attendees.  Topics are wide-ranging, with the main criteria being CEU credits.  Including seminars with these credits has boosted attendance for Las Vegas Harrah’s trip, which gets 1200 applications for just 175 slots.

Why do you care?  Let’s stop and think…where do you think they get the speakers for these sessions?  Some will be other meeting planners/industry insiders and some will be local folks with something to share.  In this age of competing venues for attendees, watch this trend steadily grow next year.