How to Make Your Auckland Corporate Event the Best Yet

How to Make Your Auckland Corporate Event the Best Yet

Kiwis across the country are taking the current border closures as an opportunity to explore their own backyard, and that domestic curiosity extends to business travel and events as well. The whole country is a smorgasbord of options for creating your ideal corporate function. But Auckland is truly the perfect location for planning your next conference or team-building day. 

At Waitakere Resort & Spa, we’ve rounded up a few stellar choices to tick off the key boxes of venue, activities, and ways to add a ‘cherry on top’ for staff, to make your next Auckland corporate event the best by far. 

Step One: Choose an Interesting Venue

Thanks to its varied landscape of sandy beaches, lush native greenery, and rolling hills, combined with a blend of rural, suburban, and urban spots, Auckland is a great starting point for picking a conference or summit venue. You can easily steer clear of the stereotypical, stuffy convention centre. 

Venture over to Waiheke Island for a true beach-vibe escape and to make the most of the island’s world-renowned vineyards. Wild on Waiheke brings the vineyard in, kicking the level of luxury up a notch with open-plan, indoor-outdoor flow for your next team day. Looking to add a healthy dose of adrenaline? Opt for ziplining through Waiheke’s stunning treetops with Ecozip Adventures, which will have the whole team smiling from ear to ear, regardless of agenda, and their location is a fantastic spot for brainstorming. 

Waiheke Island offers a blended vista of sandy shorelines and rich vineyards like no other spot in Auckland. (Image Credit: Miles Holden, https://www.newzealand.com/ Visual Library).

Have a few sailing enthusiasts on your team? Get stuck in with a hands-on yachting adventure thanks to NZ Sailing Trust’s Business Events crew, and ultimately, enjoy being on a beautiful boat out at sea while you set business goals. Or take getting ‘stuck in’ more literally, with an escape room. Escapade’s chic lounge is the perfect spot for deep strategic chats, and those strategies will be helpful when trying to finish one of their escape games.

If seclusion in a rainforest retreat is more your vibe, then we here at Waitakere Resort & Spa are the obvious choice (though we may be a little biased!). We have three rooms to choose from for the concentrated, business development portion of your conference, each aptly named after a native bird that you’ll no doubt see fliting about the expansive forest through the wrap-around windows. There’s truly no prettier selection of Auckland conference rooms, and our guest accommodation means that you won’t have to leave for the duration of your event. We can then help you make the most of the Waitakere rainforest location, with outdoor team building exercises galore.

Step Two: Add a Team Building Activity into the Mix

If one of the activities included in some of the venues suggested above don’t appeal to you as a team-building exercise, no problem; Auckland has a slew of other options to pick from.

Make the most of the Waitakere Ranges while at our Resort: mountain biking and hiking through the myriad trails will get the heart racing and the conversation flowing between employees. Or stay on site, immersed in the calm of native forest, but shake it up with some archery or axe throwing. Thanks to two operators that we work closely with, AWOL Adventures and Let Me Out, team building packages are easy add-ons to your itinerary. You could take it up a notch from there with night-time abseiling, or take it down a peg physically and get the brain ticking with a Nostalgia Challenge.

Abseiling with AWOL Adventures while staying at Waitakere Resort & Spa.

Have a quirky business brand and equally unusual characters on staff? Get them doing something just as unique, like training for the circus! Your HR Manager could become a master acrobat with Flip N Fly Circus in Auckland. They’ll get your team up on aerial apparatuses, a great challenge for body and mind.

But if getting that adventurous isn’t quite in line with your company vision, then entertain the idea of cooking your own meals – in style. Spending time together in the kitchen is a sure-fire way to a get people talking and feeling at ease. Sachie’s Kitchen harnesses this power of cooking, and their Sushi Rolling Express option is a quicker activity to add to your day or multi-day conference.

Step Three: Add some ‘treats’ for staff

After a long day of hammering out new strategies or talking through company pain points, and generally making some headway with your business, the team will more than welcome an interesting reprieve. The ideas out there for staff incentives are endless and you’ll know best what will be considered a treat by your staff members. But there are a few easy picks to complement the venues and activities above.

A Swedish Massage before dinner is a safe bet, for starters. Our on-site day spa offers a range of massage durations but 30 minutes is perfect before cocktail hour. Or get everyone outside for some free time; studies have shown that reconnecting with nature for even a little while is hugely beneficial for corporate stress, and the walking trails near our Resort are a great option for doing just that.

The team that walks together, stays together! [Image from Waitakere Resort’s Facebook page, Jan 17, 2020].

If you’ve chosen to pop over to Waiheke Island for your event, definitely make use of the beautiful selection of wineries. A flight of wines at a single spot would be a perfect treat, but a half or full day winery tour would be a true reward.

 Paring wine with good food is a must, and your team will love you for a choosing a fabulous menu. Waitakere Resort’s restaurant offers exactly that. But of course Auckland is absolutely jam-packed with dining options across the city. Depending on where you choose to run the core components of your conference, booking a staff meal at one of the many gourmet, boutique restaurants along Karangahape Road is never a misstep.

And finally, after a day (or more) of brain and body acrobatics, let your team truly unwind with some quintessential yoga the following day, or in between meetings. We have the perfect space for that here, right beside our Day Spa. So blending the two together would be ideal. Otherwise, there are a number of yoga instructors in Auckland who can be hired for your conference and come to you.

For the epitome of yoga and wellness to offset the hard work achieved at your event, consider treating your staff to a wellness workshop with SOUL Centre here at Waitakere Resort. Along with a yoga component, your employees will also benefit from guided motivation, goal setting and life coaching with their skilled instructors.

Ultimately, choosing Auckland is the right initial step in planning your next corporate event. And the Auckland conference venue options are truly endless. But for a balance of work and wellness, business agendas and team activities, rest and reward, we’d love to welcome you here at Waitakere Resort & Spa. Reach out to our Conference/Event Coordinator, Razita Raizada, today: events@waitakereresort.co.nz.