TAKING THE GAMBLE OUT OF GAMING DESTINATIONS

For the folks at Providian Agency Group, it was hard to reconcile the messages: On the one hand its agent demographics are solidly Bible-belt conservative, yet since the mid-1980s, meeting evaluation forms that asked agents where they wanted to go for an incentive program came back every year with Las Vegas among the top four or five sites. "We stayed away for many years worrying that a gambling destination would out-and-out offend many of our agents," says Lisa Windhorst, manager of meeting