Team Building Transport

In our last blog we asked whether some towns and cities make for more successful team building than others. In this blog we look at transport and how you get to your event. Are some forms of transport more 'team building' than others?

First let's address distance. It's not so much distance, actually, as the time it takes to cover that distance. Generally speaking if you are running a day event it should not take more than an hour to get to the location, and ideally closer to half an hour. If you are in a city this may mean that day events are best held within the city itself and experienced event companies will know of green spaces where events can be held without subjecting people to a long commute.

For a two day event people will travel further. An hour and a half is fairly common and, if you have a specific theme for the event (for example the sort of outdoor activities that you can only get in places like Wales) or a particularly thrilling venue then a two hour journey may be acceptable. If your location is one of those conference venues close to a motorway junction and most or all of the event is indoors then people may question a long journey to get there. Think in terms of cost / benefit.

Coach or train journeys can be fun and there are things that you can do to make them even more so. They can feel a bit like school trips (oh, come on, you're not such a grown up that you cannot relate to that idea are you?) and you can take picnics to break the journey up. You can also organise activities, for example quizzes, sing-a-longs (see previous comment) or we can provide a Murder Mystery to make the journey pass in a flash.

Imagine taking a train from town to country with a Murder Mystery starting on the journey. When you get to your destination , a small rural train station, you find a selection of pre-sized mountain bikes and a character from the mystery gives out maps and instructions. A Treasure Hunt follows, with teams arriving at a pub in the evening before settling down at a camp site where the mystery continues with a spooky moonlight surprise based on a local ghost story. In this case a relatively long journey from town to country can be built into the event and made part of the fun.

There are potential problems with transport and this is where the advice of a good event company, based on past experience, will come in handy. For example, imagine that you have an event in a park approximately half an hour from your office and you have the idea that hiring a vintage bus for the journey might be a lot of fun. The event is in the summer and, on the day, temperatures are sweltering. There's no air conditioning on the vintage bus and you hit traffic. If only you had thought to pack cold packs with drinks on board. By the time the weary travelers arrive for the event they are hot, sweaty and they have had enough. You can see how ideas conceived with the best of intentions can go wrong.

So travel can add to the event, but it needs to be thought through and planned. When working with Organise Events you can be sure that our experience will help you to get the best result.