Conference Centers Revive Team-Building Concepts

As many planners' purse strings loosen, team-building events are resurgent industrywide, and conference centers are hasting to hook their clients up with the most modern and stylish options in that field or to offer such events in-house. The traditional ropes courses are very much "last decade," according to conference center executives, but the older concept of helping people to work together in intimate settings has regained popularity.

Not surprisingly, considering the current preoccupation with diet, many team-building events today focus on food. Another trend is to offer brief, low cost events that will break the ice and get attendees excited by making them work toward a common goal-without taking a lot of time.

"We're seeing a return of the demand for team building, which has been absent since 2001," said Karen Pendleton, director of sales and marketing at the Emory Conference Center Hotel in Atlanta. "We're focusing on culinary events where our chef can work with a group in an hors d'oeuvres contest or the production of a complete dinner. We've also used The Drum Café, a South African-based team-building group that uses group drumming as its main exercise."

Hal Powell, regional vice president of sales and marketing for Benchmark Hospitality International in the Woodlands, Texas, agrees.

"Team-building is making a comeback, and the idea is to work on projects together and have fun, rather than testing your skills. We see demand for activities that are not necessarily competitive, but which create opportunities to build camaraderie."

Michael Swyney, director of marketing at the Pacific Palms Conference Resort in industry Hills, California, says that in some cases, groups are returning to the "touch-feely" ideas of the 1980s, using events in which people work together in smaller settings. His in-house special events team provides elaborate adventures such as a "Conquest of Temecula" excursion into the nearby wine country, as well as simple exercises that can make an impression at a nominal cost. Examples are the "Pipe" and "Pond" exercises, in which participants have to set aside any possible annoyance with each other and work closely to achieve an objective.

"In the Pipe exercise, I give each participant a piece of PVC pipe, then I hand one of them a marble and say, "let's get the customer into the bucket," Swyney said. "They then have to pass that marble from pipe to pipe until it finally lands in a bucket. Of course they drop the marble a lot and get riled, and meanwhile I'm telling them that the team that was here last week did it a lot faster."

"In the Pond exercise, we put a few "lily pads" on the floor, and make the team strategize and work together to get everyone across the pond. This is a great way to get a team energized at the beginning of a meeting.