With corporate sensitivities to public perceptions at an all-time high in the post-bailout era, resort properties have had to become much more creative as they try to revive the group meeting segment of their business. That’s led to a host of innovative new activities now being offered to executives and meeting planners who want to bolster team spirit and generate new enthusiasm among employees when holding offsite conferences, without appearing excessive or unproductive.
In addition to traditional activities such as golf, tennis, bicycling and hiking, properties like Vermont’s Stowe Mountain Lodge (see “A Place for All Seasons,” C&RB, February 2009) and the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo., now include choices such as wall climbing, carpentry classes and yoga in packages designed to lure corporate clients, reports Bloomberg.com.
“These have been challenging times, but during these last two years, our new programs have helped to attract corporate groups,” says Morgan Fukumoto, a spokeswoman for Stowe Mountain. “They look for more team-building activities and to get a great value for their money.”
Stowe has boosted its corporate group bookings with such programs as the “Naked Table Project,” through which participants learn to build furniture from scratch.
Meanwhile, at Miraval Arizona Resort & Spa in Tucson, Ariz., groups can use meeting breaks to test their skills on an obstacle course, by walking a tightrope or jumping from a 25-foot pole (an activity known as the “Quantum Leap”).
The availability of those kinds of activities spurred the front office of the National Basketball Association’s Portland Trailblazers to hold its annual teambuilding conference at Miraval two years in a row. The group, when not in meetings to discuss the upcoming season, built camaraderie by balancing on an oversized teeter-totter and scaling a 15-foot wall.
“The whole team tried to get over this wall,” Traci Reandeau, the Trailblazers’ Vice President of Human Resources, told Bloomberg.com. “You have to use everybody’s strengths, so it’s not like you could just step on head coach Nate McMillan, who’s pretty tall, to get over it.”
The Sanderling Resort & Spa, in Duck, N.C., will begin offering butchering workshops to its corporate and leisure guests in November, says Laura Millett, a spokeswoman for the resort. Guests will “meet their meat” as a German master butcher takes them through the process of selecting and cutting meat from steer, hogs, lambs and other animals at a nearby organic farm.
While obstacle courses and carpentry classes may not be enough to help corporate travel return to its 2007 peak, it seems these corporate programs are starting to catch on.
At Stowe Mountain Lodge, where groups can get maple-infused hand and foot massages during business meetings, corporate programs have been successful enough to help spur the 139-room hotel to open an additional 179 rooms in December, Fukumoto says. Corporate reservations for the year are up 34 percent from 2009, she adds, and about 30 percent of Stowe Mountain’s bookings are now from business groups, with the rest from leisure travelers. The resort is trying to get the ratio back up to 50-50.
At the Broadmoor, which promises corporate clients a full refund if they aren’t satisfied, groups can participate in fly-fishing and whitewater- rafting excursions. Bookings for 2011 show a 15 percent increase in business-group demand from this year, says John Washko, Vice President of Sales and Marketing.
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