After 18 months of social distancing and remote meetings, teams are eager for opportunities to reconnect in meaningful ways. The bonds created through face-to-face experiences foster teamwork, build trust and cultivate a level of authenticity that cannot be replicated online.
In today’s post-Covid era, meeting and event planners are looking for settings that promote team building while providing a sense of comfort and safety for all involved. The ideal environment offers spacious indoor meeting accommodations paired with outdoor areas that lend themselves to reconnecting. Meeting and event planners are looking for meeting places that blend productive work environments with access to fun and relaxing activities.
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Many of the groups we are seeing are looking for unique ways to re-engage their teams after being apart for so long. One group at Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe | Houston, for example, recently booked a nine-hole golf scramble. This structured activity really has nothing to do with golf, but it has everything to do with being together—something groups have missed out on for the last year and a half.
Whether it’s enjoying a golf scramble or other structured activity like a scavenger hunt or a cooking competition, one thing is clear: groups are craving connection more than ever. Something incredibly powerful happens when you bring people together to find a common goal and a purpose.
Leaders also are looking for ways to reward their teams. Our lives were turned upside down overnight due to the pandemic, causing businesses and individuals to reconfigure and quickly adjust to a changing environment. Without a doubt, the last year added unique challenges in all of our lives. Now teams are looking for opportunities to unwind.
If groups are not requesting a structured activity as part of their meeting, building in leisure time becomes an important part of the teambuilding equation. Realizing the need to recharge and exhale, through activities such as spa treatments—the Milk & Honey Body Bliss Treatment is one groups may like—fishing, pool time or implementing some down time among work meetings and events, is more of a priority in a post-Covid world.
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As teams reunite, they are looking for venues that support a restart of their business goals while ensuring participants feel at ease. They are looking for spacious meeting rooms, allowing groups to spread out, so they can dig in and focus on being productive. Meeting planners are seeking venues that inspire, reinvigorate, and refresh teams to elicit their best work.
Above all else, groups are looking to motivate, reenergize and recharge as we move to the other side of the pandemic. While we learned that teams and businesses could survive behind a screen, to truly thrive they must be together in every sense of the word.
Tom Faust is the vice president of sales and marketing for Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe | Houston.
