Corporate Travel Destinations

The Westin La Cantera Resort  in San Antonio, Texas is an upscale destination hotel.  With a Colonial Texas design on a hilltop overlooking the downtown area, the resort offers 508 guest rooms and plenty of meeting space.  There are  a variety of activities available, including two championship golf courses, six outdoor pools, a full-service spa, and a fitness center. 

For meetings and special events, there is more than 39,000 sq. ft. of indoor/outdoor event space, including the 17,000 sq. ft. ballroom.   There are also eight separate meeting rooms and two boardrooms. 

The location is ideal, as it is within 12 miles of the airport, and approximately 15 miles from the downtown and historic River Walk areas.   It is also conveniently situated adjacent to the Six Flags Fiesta Texas Theme Park. 

The resort can create team building activities to help unify team members and bring groups together. 

westinlacantera.com

Many companies are trimming their budgets to adjust to the changing economic climate. When it is time to cut costs, the travel budget is usually one of the first items on the chopping block. For some companies, this may mean canceling travel plans altogether, but for others it simply means finding ways to stretch your corporate travel dollars and get a bigger bang for fewer bucks.

One option that has recently increased in popularity is staying close to home. When business meetings, team building activities, retreats, conferences and incentive travel take place closer to home, this can significantly cut down on transportation costs, as well as increasing attendance. However, opting for nearby destinations and venues comes with its own set of challenges, including creating excitement about the event and maintaining its appeal when you do not have an exotic location to rely on to do that for you.

Here are three ways to make your local event more appealing and create excitement among attendees:
1. Choose a unique venue. Think outside of the boardroom and opt for a museum, wild animal park, theme park or docked cruise ship.
2. Spring for better entertainment. If your budget will allow you to have a well-known headliner, this alone can make up for the lack of an exotic setting.
3. Invite an enticing guest speaker. A well-known guest speaker may or may not be more affordable than a great headliner, so check prices for both before deciding which will work better for your particular situation.

A little competition can go a long way, particularly when it comes to team building activities. Team building challenges that break your group up into smaller teams competing against each other are a great way to build camaraderie, encourage participation and get your attendees working together in new and different ways. This type of team building activity can also be particularly useful if staff members who are of different levels in the company work together as equals on each team. When friendly competition and small working groups are involved, you will often see your natural leaders shine, your staff’s wallflowers become more involved and the rivals begin to work together for the greater good.

There are many types of competitive activities that can be used in team building. One example is requiring each team to build a solar powered vehicle using provided materials. This timely activity is a great way to increase environmental awareness while building your team, which makes it an even more appropriate choice for this era of increasing environmental concern. Of course, it is not enough to simply build a solar powered vehicle; in order to really have some fun and encourage some friendly competition, there must also be a race. This activity is a great way to blow off steam at the end of a long day of more strenuous team building activities, or even a fun way to spend an afternoon during a regular work day.