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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.
Planning a company retreat comes with its own challenges, from finding the right destination and venue to coordinating accommodation, activities, and logistics. 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:
- Team alignment on goals and mission
- Boosting morale across the company
- Building relationships between departments and teams
- Generating new ideas and innovation
- Sharing company results
The retreat agenda, of course, depends on your specific goals. Most company retreats last between 2 and 5 days. The ideal agenda depends on your goals, team size, and destination. Here's a sample itinerary of a 4-day company retreat in Barcelona:
For more inspiration, read our detailed retreat schedule for large companies. A lot can happen with a large group – delayed flights, missed connections, or weather issues can derail a schedule quickly.
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.
Weather not cooperating? If you’re stuck inside, host a game night. Divide into smaller groups to get competitive over Monopoly, trivia, or Charades. Make a tournament out of it to bring the whole group together at the end of the evening to cheer on the finalists.
Karaoke night is another fun team bonding activity great for bigger groups. Those who aren’t afraid of the spotlight can step right up and belt out a song. The rest of the group can dance, laugh, and cheer them on.
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.
While it is not too difficult to organize activities for groups of 15 people, the activities for 50+ are a challenge. Generally speaking, there are two approaches to organizing activities for large groups. First, you can divide the big group into smaller teams. Alternately, you can loosely organize an activity – like an afternoon at the beach – and let people decide how to spend their time. Read more about each approach in our guide to planning big group activities.
Lastly, we’ve learned through trial and error that it’s difficult to make restaurant bookings for large groups. The approach is different from making a reservation for a pair or family-sized group. Start your research by ticking the “good for large groups” option on Yelp, TripAdvisor, or Google. Learn more in our article, “5 common mistakes to avoid when booking restaurants for a large group”.
Enigma’s workation strengthens culture and collaboration
Enigma is a Switzerland-based remote-first digital agency. For their company retreat, the team of 32 spent six days in Ericeira, Portugal, combining productive work sessions with team-building activities.
Through workshops, brainstorming sessions, and activities like a group surf lesson, the team strengthened collaboration and company culture. As a result, Enigma’s company retreat generated fresh ideas, boosted morale, and brought the team closer together.
Mynd retreat resulted in 12 new product features
Mynd is a property management company based in California. For their corporate retreat, Mynd’s team of 32 people relocated for 10 days to Surf Office Barcelona. The team spent the first three days running a hackathon. The team developed 12 new product features in a quick sprint of innovation.
Mynd’s approach to their company retreat was to prepare beforehand; key design elements were already in place when they arrive in Spain. As a result, the team could move quickly and work without designers.
Amun’s retreat sparks innovation and team bonding
Amun is a leading cryptocurrency issuer helping make digital assets more accessible to investors. For their company retreat, the team of 45 spent six days in Mallorca focused on innovation and company culture.
At the heart of the retreat was a 48-hour hackathon, where employees worked in small groups to develop and present new ideas. The result was a productive week that generated creative concepts, strengthened relationships, and brought the team closer together.
Invision’s team comes together for beach meetings
Finally, InVision is a product design tool and 100% remote company. The team met in Ericeira for a company retreat with Surf Office.
They split their time between team bonding – stand-up paddle, surfing, and eating incredible seafood – and a hackathon. During their one-day hackathon, InVision built new product features and internal communication tools.
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.
“I just wanted to say a thousand thanks to you for all of your hardwork and help in the organising of our team summit. It was a huge success and we couldn’t have done it without you!”
Emma Louise Bowen, People & Operations Manager in Workday
1. Tell us more about your plans
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?
2. Planning with your dedicated project manager
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.
3. Detailed plan and schedule of your company retreat
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 North Africa.
