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A company retreat is an opportunity to step away from day-to-day work and bring people together around shared goals. Whether you're looking to strengthen relationships, improve collaboration, celebrate milestones, or align on strategy, retreats create space for conversations that rarely happen in the office or over Zoom.
For remote and distributed teams, company retreats are especially valuable. Bringing everyone together in person helps build trust, strengthen company culture, and create a sense of connection across departments and teams.
Whether you're organizing a retreat for 20 people or a company-wide gathering for 600, Surf Office helps you create an experience that fits your goals and budget.
There are a number of good reasons why your company might come together for a retreat. A company retreat can help your team:
Most company retreats last between 2 and 5 days. While every retreat is different, here's a sample 4-day company retreat itinerary in Barcelona.
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Looking for inspiration on how to keep your company busy on the retreat?
Here are some activities that Surf Office has hosted in the past:
Workday, a people analytics company, hosted its company retreat in Barcelona. The team spent at the beach with activities like stand up paddle, swimming, and a surfing lesson. A beach trip is good for big groups because everyone can do what they want. Some can swim, some can play beach volleyball, and some can veg in the sun.
Get away from the noise and hustle of the city and bring your team for a nature hike. Our destinations in the Catskill Mountains, Zion national park, and Gran Canaria are perfect for bringing your team on a hike for some fresh air.
Break up your larger group in small teams and take a walk through the historic streets of Lisbon, for instance. See famous monuments, hidden gems, and learn about the culture of the city on a scavenger hunt. Get to know the city and each other in a fun way.
Invite a local expert to speak about something out-of-the-box. Or, have your employees volunteer to give informal Ted Talk-style presentations about something they’re passionate about. This approach leverages internal resources, uplifts individual interests, and shows your support for skills beyond work roles.
EVBox is a company focused on providing charging solutions for electric vehicles. Their group of 200 people joined Surf Office for a company retreat. In the process, we hosted a special dining experience in Lisbon with traditional dishes and drinks. Organizing meals can be a challenge for large groups: read what we’ve learned about making restaurant reservations.
If you want to keep your team bonding business-focused, host a hackathon. Divide the large group up into small teams and work on a project. A traditional hackathon focuses on creative problem-solving – emphasis on “creative.” Don’t be afraid to make the hackathon open-ended to foster innovation.
A company retreat is an event that brings employees together outside their usual work environment to focus on collaboration, team building, strategic planning, and company culture. Company retreats can range from small team gatherings to company-wide events involving hundreds of participants.
Companies organize retreats to strengthen team relationships, improve communication, align on goals, celebrate milestones, and create opportunities for meaningful collaboration. Retreats are particularly valuable for remote and distributed teams that spend most of their time working online.
The terms company retreat and corporate retreat are often used interchangeably. Both involve bringing teams together for workshops, planning sessions, team-building activities, and relationship building. Corporate retreat is more commonly used by larger organizations, while company retreat is often preferred by startups and growing companies.
Most company retreats last between 2 and 4 days. A 3-day retreat is often considered the ideal format because it provides enough time for productive sessions, team-building activities, and informal networking without keeping employees away from work for too long.
For the best venue selection and availability, most companies begin planning their retreat 3 to 6 months in advance. Larger groups, international teams, and retreats during peak travel seasons may require additional planning time.
A successful company retreat agenda typically combines strategic discussions, workshops, team-building activities, networking opportunities, and free time. The best retreats balance productivity with opportunities for employees to connect in a more relaxed setting.
The cost of a company retreat depends on factors such as destination, accommodation, group size, season, and activities. Budgets can vary significantly, but most companies aim to find a balance between creating a memorable experience and achieving their business objectives.
The best company retreat destinations offer convenient travel connections, quality accommodation, meeting facilities, and engaging activities. Popular choices include destinations such as Lisbon, Barcelona, Mallorca, Porto, and other locations that combine productive work environments with memorable team experiences.
Absolutely. Company retreats are especially valuable for remote teams because they provide opportunities for face-to-face collaboration, stronger personal connections, and team alignment that are difficult to achieve through virtual meetings alone.
A company retreat planning service can handle venue sourcing, accommodation, meeting spaces, transportation, activities, budgeting, logistics, and on-site coordination. This allows internal teams to focus on their retreat goals while experienced planners manage the operational details.
In full transparency, everyone loved it. People are still talking about it. The main goal was team bonding and you helped me to reach it.
Everyone was delighted by the venue, the activities, the transfer coordination and everything! Long live Surf Office! Can’t wait to plan our next company retreat with you :)
Our team offsite retreat was excellent - great food, weather and activities. Even the people that couldn't attend wished they could have made it. And the location was perfect. Surf Office - Thank you very much for your help and support with planning and organization - and Beatriz our retreat manager was fantastic - fast, efficient and always kept us informed. It really made the difference. It really did!
Surf Office helped us plan our 60 person staff retreat, scoping locations, venues, restaurants, activities, and more. Angela was really on top of it and paid close attention to all of the details. Definitely saved us time on research and back-and-forth with all of the various contact persons!
We went into talks with SurfOffice and hit it off with the founders to make this happen. Theres a team that will guide you through the choice and a platform for when you are to arrive with an agenda. Our team likes to bring in community members to these types of events and the crew is excited. The onboarding is going well and we paid the deposit, and we're looking forward to the trip. Our party had to reduce significantly due to constraints and the team has been accomodating so far. 5* everyone had a good time and Rayna on site made everyone feel comfortable.
The location was great, the areas dedicated to us were amazing and all things we asked for were there - also, I love the shared dashboard to organize.
I recently worked with Surf Office to organize an offsite retreat for my company in Gran Canaria, and I couldn't be happier with the experience! Beatriz, the retreat planner, was incredible. From start to finish, she was exceptionally organized, responsive, and attentive to every detail. Planning a retreat for a team can be daunting, but Beatriz made the process seamless. She answered all my questions quickly and thoroughly, and her recommendations were spot-on. The offsite itself was beyond amazing – the accommodations and activities were perfectly tailored to our team’s needs. Surf Office took all the stress out of planning and delivered an unforgettable experience for our group. I highly recommend them to anyone looking to plan a work retreat. If you’re lucky enough to have Beatriz as your planner, you’re in great hands!
We would like to hear more about your plans and how we can make your next company summit a success.
Do you have an office in one location or is your team distributed? Can employees bring their partners? Is the retreat going to be more about work or fun?
Even finding and booking one single restaurant for the dinner can be a painful project. Is the food going to be good? Is the price fair? How many of our team members have diet restrictions?
Each retreat is a combination of multiple smaller projects and with a large group the complexity might be scary.
But no worries, we mastered this process and made it fun and easy.
Our experienced project manager dedicated to you will help you with a whole organisation from searching for flights to crafting unique surprise activities for your team.
We will be your one-stop-shop for all of the logistics of your retreat. The Retreat Planner assigned to your group will work with you to book and coordinate everything from A-Z, providing you with peace-of-mind and a guarantee of quality and reliability from our local partners at the best possible prices.
According to our repeat clients and our first-time clients who have previous experience in organizing retreats in-house, this is the greatest value that we bring to them.
At the end of the planning process you will end up with the bullet-proof schedule. There is no room for improvisation with a large group.
Everything must work perfectly, all the activities and transfers must be just-on-time.
Sounds like a dream end, right? That’s how we work.
You are ready for your epic company retreat.
Choose from hundreds of retreat locations in Europe, America, Asia-Pacific, and Africa.
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