With over 5 years of planning company-wide and executive offsites; we’ve picked up a few processes that not only save our clients time but, most importantly for us, save our event producers and coordinators time. But hey, we don’t want to wave any false flags. It hasn’t always been like this. We’ve made every mistake you can imagine over the years and it took us a lot of work to get our service to place it is today for our clients.
Hopefully this guide can help minimize some of those mistakes and, most importantly, streamline and simplify your time and effort on this project for your team.
Always start by identifying the Vision, Goals and Budget with your leadership team. Starting here will save you so so much time at every step of the process moving forward.
Setting the VISION means having an keen understanding of what the experience might actually look like for any employee while on-site. What does a rough itinerary look like? What is the lodging situation look like? Single rooms, shared rooms, are bunk-beds ok, how about glamping? Are we looking to offer just beer and wine or do we wan’t a full-bar? How much space do we need for an all-hands session? How important is Wifi, Cell Service or a VPN?
Now, we want you to create a target budget for your venue research. This is going to save you TONS of time here! Here is the way you can calculate your target budget for venues.
We have a lodging per night per person target! Let’s Go! Wait, keep in mind that this is just a compass for ourselves as we dive into venue research. We know that hotel rooms for $300/night w/ 2 beds in them will work for your group. We also know that a buy-out ranch or camp needs to land under $150/night/person just for the lodging element.
With a good idea of the budget estimate, # of attendee’s, date windows, vision for lodging and venue, goals and requirements for a venue; you’re going to be able to cross a lot of venues off the list without dialing a group sales office or submitting an RFP. (For new planner - this is a good thing)
Hit your favorite search engine and focus in on 3 areas that you believe are great based on the vision component you worked with your leadership team. Try to find 2 great venues that fit inside of your scope in each area. Once you have 6-10 venues that you think are solid, then start to reach-out and check availability and pricing. If you think the venue is over budget - we like to send them a budget in the initial email and say - if you can make this work at your property for this price, let me know.
Congratulations, you have a venue for your next company offsite! Wahoo. it’s (mostly) fun stuff from here.
Now that you have a venue contract - work with the venue to design a rough itinerary for your retreat. We use google sheets and even build deck presentations here - whatever works for you and your team.
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