Breeze cooling your skin. Sun warming your view. Arms spread wide, floating down through the mountains. Can you picture it? A paragliding escapade through the Grand Tetons is just one of many teambuilding opportunities offered at Benchmark Resorts & Hotels properties around the country, designed to heighten your senses in a way that embraces creativity.
And embracing creativity is vital: while executives have ranked creativity among their most desired skills, they’ve also listed it as the one they’re most afraid of losing in the current corporate climate.
Intentionally designating a physical, interactive and revitalizing space for your meetings can help encourage creative thinking and quality teamwork.
Whether your team is spending nine to five at a desk in the company office or on a couch in a makeshift WFH space, sparking creativity deserves top priority.
Here are five destinations that can strengthen your team’s creative muscle:
Set in the rustic Sonoran Desert, this Arizonan resort provides meeting destinations both in the cool comfort of their historic ballrooms and on the spacious lawns of their lush grounds. Let nature ignite your team’s creativity around a bonfire on the Native American-inspired Village Green or get the creative juices flowing while sitting among citrus trees in the Trellis Garden. Try taking your team on an activity centered around mental wellbeing, like a barre class or a desert hike, to boost company unity and allow space for innovative thinking.
With a focus on pushing creative limits, this wilderness resort in Jackson Hole uses the great outdoors to inspire imaginative teamwork. With options like paragliding in the mountains or climbing blindfolded ropes courses among the treetops, a stay here will introduce your team to new experiences that are sure to promote inventive ideas. Even an event on the hotel’s grounds can encourage creativity: try holding a meeting in one of their beautiful outdoor venues with their throwbox microphone, a synergetic tool which can be tossed across the grounds to different team members, pushing the limits of quick, creative thinking.
This West Virginian lakeside oasis provides opportunities to relax and rejuvenate through its peaceful views and smattering of imaginative team activities. Create cocktails together in a team mixology session, investigate a whodunit mystery through the theatrical performance of a three-course dinner or compete in a fishing challenge along the stretch of the resort’s 23-mile lake. Whichever you choose, your team is sure to push the limits of brainstorming and collaboration.
Call your meeting to order on the terrace of this luxury resort, overlooking the sands of Daytona Beach. The Shores offers meeting packages designed to balance productivity with regeneration, building a schedule for your team that intertwines conferences and breakout sessions with yoga classes and cocktails. Also available are customizable events, allowing you to work with the resort to build a schedule that best motivates your team and incorporates an array of outdoor venues, wellness activities and culinary experiences.
Situated alongside Lake Michigan, this Midwestern retreat has a mission to use its resources to bolster innovation and cultivate teamwork. The resort offers meeting consultations to help your team make the most of its sessions by planning them mindfully, with creativity at the forefront. Schedule a day full of advisory conferences with meetings professionals mixed with refreshment breaks in luxurious spaces to uplift your team and improve your ability to collaborate.
In today’s remote world, it can often be challenging to find a time (and place) to unplug and foster meaningful connections within your company. For those looking to escape the everyday and inspire innovation, collaboration and relaxation, consider a lakeside location for your next company meeting.
For meeting planners, finding new, unique and inspiring destinations for an upcoming event can prove difficult. Here are three Benchmark Resorts & Hotels' destinations dotted around the country, which offer unique experiences for meeting guests.
If your team’s connection relies on your internet connection, it’s probably time to think about making your workplace culture a little more personal. So, move morning coffee from your home office to one of Benchmark Resorts & Hotels’ boutique properties. We’ll bring the to-go cups.
Taking a step away from traditional office spaces and heading to new places can help teams refocus on business objectives, offering a fresh, relaxed environment, free of workplace distractions.
Happy employees are more likely to have a positive attitude when it comes to their work, increasing productivity and the overall culture of a company.
Whether it’s a large corporate gathering or a small group of meeting goers, Benchmark Resorts & Hotels has several excellent locations to host impactful and productive meetings:
Often, the best ideas come when we take a step (far) away from our usual surroundings. However, while the idea of jetting across the globe for meetings sounds inspiring, it can be a logistical challenge for meeting planners.
Over the past decade or so, sustainability has been at the forefront of workplace initiatives. But that shouldn’t just be a focus in the workplace itself – businesses should strive to ensure that they are engaging in sustainability practices even when traveling for conventions, corporate retreats and meetings alike.
Whether it’s an intimate conference or gathering for a small business or a chance to reward an individual team in a large corporation, Benchmark Resorts & Hotels has some excellent locations to host impactful meetings, executive retreats and events to meet the needs of smaller groups:
For meeting planners, technology can be a friend or foe. And, in this new hybrid environment with both virtual and in-person attendees to consider, meeting organizers must rely on conferencing technology – to ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience for all attendees.
With many companies making the switch to fully remote or hybrid work, there’s added pressure on offsite meetings to make up for lost facetime and build team bonds that can benefit business.
While company retreats have long been a staple of the business world, they often take place in a busy and overstimulated location like a major city for reasons including accessibility and proximity to a large airport. Planning a retreat in a remote location not only boosts your attendees’ comfort level as they ease back into in-person meetings, but time spent in a remote setting surrounded by nature is proven to improve brain health and stimulate creative thinking as well.
As meeting-goers begin to convene again in person, wellness should be top of mind. Meeting planners and attendees are increasingly aware of the benefits of therapeutic services and how they play a role in the success of any meeting, conference or program.
