Company retreats are typically a welcome retreat from the office. Add a beach and things get that much better. While these four resorts offer the standard amenities for any company meeting or retreat—meeting rooms, restaurants and activities—they also feature beaches, which make for some extraordinary team-building exercises. Groups can build sailable boats from cardboard, go fishing and even dine with dolphins.
Hawks Cay Resort
Florida Keys
www.hawkscay.com
Hawks Cay Resort has 60 acres of oceanfront property, can accommodate up to 1,000 guests, and has the largest meeting space (25,000 square feet) of any resort in the Florida Keys.
The resort offers a number of team-building activities, including fishing trips, snorkeling and dining with dolphins.
“Boring banquet lunches in a stuffy meeting room aren’t allowed at Hawks Cay,” says Joni Barkley, director of sales at the resort.
“Instead, you will find our groups enjoying their lunch outside on the covered Dolphin Deck. Where else can you break up your meeting by watching bottlenose dolphins in their natural habitat interacting and smiling with the group?”
The property’s pod of dolphins lives in an on-site lagoon. Guests can take their dolphin encounter even further than just lunch by learning to train the dolphins or swimming with them.
Barkley says The Boy Scouts, American Dental Association, Equifax and Kia all recently used Hawks Cay Resort for meetings.
“The variety of venue options and on-site activities allow meeting planners to create itineraries that are unique and engaging without ever having to transfer the group off-property,” she says. “We provide a destination that keeps a group together in one place while never having attendees participate in the same activities twice or even congregate in the same venue multiple times.”
Wild Dunes Resort
Charleston, S.C.
www.wilddunes.com
About 25 minutes from historic downtown Charleston, the resort offers groups a variety of team-building exercises, many of which involve some kind of corporate social responsibility program.
“Wanting to give back in some form continues to be of interest among groups,” says Jody Harris, Wild Dunes Resort’s director of sales. “Our team works with each group to customize a charitable team-building activity. In the past, we’ve incorporated unique group activities to build bikes for underprivileged children, assembled care packages for the troops and helped out local food banks.”
Other activities include “Shagging with the Stars” and “Fazio Putt-Putt.” While “Shagging with the Stars” might bring to mind an Austin Powers-related reference, it actually refers to the official South Carolina state dance: shagging. Team members are given a 60-minute shagging lesson and then are paired off with dance partners to compete.
In “Fazio Putt-Putt,” teams build their own putt-putt course on the beach using sand and obstacles. Then, teams compete with each other in a mini-golf tournament.
Meeting planners enjoy the property’s location, says customer Michelle Mifsud, an administrative assistant at Daltile Corp.
“We have a lot of people come from Ohio in the middle of
winter, and going to a beach meeting is like getting away for them,” she says. “That kind of thing is appealing because while I might not go jump in the ocean, I might be able to get my feet in the sand for a little bit.”
The Wild Dunes Resort staff prides itself on spending time with meeting planners to understand their organizations’ aspirations for a meeting, according to Harris.
“If the CEO has a specific theme for the meeting or retreat, our team transforms the resort into that image—from amenities and cocktail napkins to menus, decor and more, throughout the property,” he says. “We thrive on these creative opportunities.”
The Tides Inn
Irvington, Va.
www.tidesinn.com
Tucked away on a private peninsula in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay, The Tides Inn is secluded yet located under an hour’s drive from three area airports.
“Because of our location, groups want to take advantage of marina activities for team-building events,” says Director of Sales Lindsay D. Curry. “We have found our beachside activities to be very popular, including ‘Build-A-Boat,’ where participants race to create a floating craft, ‘Tides Inn Survivor’ as well as ‘Croquet & Chardonnay’ on our water-view croquet lawn.”
In “Tides Inn Survivor,” teams construct a shelter for their group with just a few basic suppliers. Then teams must try to keep their shelters safe as the opposing teams try to destroy and capture their “hut.” The team with the greater number of “safe” people wins.
The inn also offers an activity—“Liquor Lockers Key Match”—that ties into Irvington’s history. The resort has 100 antique ‘liquor lockers’ in its Chesapeake Club restaurant, where guests would store their liquor in the days when Irvington was a dry town and the restaurant could not sell alcohol.
“Liquor Lockers Key Match” is a memory game, where participants go through the lockers to find the matches of items inside, with the help of their teammates.
Capitol One, Virginia Community College Systems and the Virginia Association of Realtors are among the companies that have held retreats at The Tides Inn.
“In addition to our wealth of activities, our private retreat-style location is the biggest draw to The Tides Inn,” Curry says. “Being a boutique property of just 106 guest rooms, smaller groups can get the attention they may not find at a large conference center while still enjoying the amenities they usually only experience at larger resorts.”
The property has 21,000 square feet of meeting space.
The Breakers
Palm Beach, Fla.
www.thebreakers.com
The Breakers Palm Beach first opened in 1896 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The 540-room Italian Renaissance-style hotel is built on 140 acres of oceanfront property and just completed a 10-year, $250 million revitalization program.
The Breakers offers many innovative team-building programs. “The Breakers Olympics” includes several team sports, while “Home Makeover” calls for a group to improve the home of an area family in need. In “Build a Bike,” teams compete to solve clues to win parts and build a bike as quickly as possible. They then meet with kids to whom the bikes are donated.
“Aside from exciting activities, other amenities we offer our corporate clients are on-site golf and a golf academy, tennis, a world-class spa, a Mediterranean-style beach club with luxury beach bungalows, nine restaurants and lounges featuring various cuisines,” says Michele Wilde, director of conference services.
The average tenure of the resort’s team of sales and conference services specialists is 13 years, which means they have the experience to create events to each client’s specifications. The hotel offers a number of benefits for companies that book meetings or retreats during “value dates” (dates are listed on the website), including complimentary Internet access, five VIP upgrades to the best available rooms, no food and beverage minimums and complimentary meeting space.
The Breakers is just six miles from Palm Beach International Airport and five minutes from downtown West Palm Beach.
Lisa Armstrong spent some of her childhood in the Caribbean, and thinks the beach is the best place for most things, including meetings.
