Arizona Meetings Get Active

 

You know the drill: Wake up, eat a heavy breakfast, sit through three hours of keynotes, eat a heavy lunch, sit through four hours of breakout sessions, eat a heavy dinner. Rinse, repeat.

Well, more and more Arizona venues are hoping to break you out of the usual meeting routine. Many hotels and resorts—particularly those in Phoenix and Scottsdale—are offering unique activity options for groups, either on site or through local partners. The idea is that these interactive programs not only provide respite from the daily grind of conference attendance but also highlight the destination itself to make the meeting all the more memorable.

“It mixes it up,” says Kelli Blubaum, senior national sales manager of the Scottsdale Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It’s hard to keep focused when you’re in a meeting room eight to 10 hours a day. There’s even research that shows that physical activity, or just taking a mental break—doing something out of the box and out of your norm—energizes you to come back and really refocus and rededicate to heavy content.”

These “active meetings” are particularly well-suited to Arizona, which boasts great weather—sunny and dry, with cool evenings—and all that the Sonoran Desert has to offer. 

Desert Wolf Tours, for example, offers participants the opportunity to drive their own all-terrain military vehicles through the desert with a professional guide who will point out scenic spots, Native American ruins, ghost towns, mines, and river crossings along the way. Many resorts also partner with local venues to offer cattle rides or speedcar racing, while Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden will bring a docent on site to build small cactus gardens with attendees, teaching them about local wildlife in the process.

“It’s good interaction for the attendees,” notes Blubaum. “It’s about camaraderie and teambuilding for them.”

 

Hotels and resorts are introducing their own programs as well. Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain, a boutique property overlooking Paradise Valley, offers mixology courses. The Westin Kierland Resort & Spa, the Phoenician, and the Arizona Biltmore hotels offer nighttime “glow golf,” with glow-in-the-dark putting contests. The Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale offers “make your own trail mix” breaks, as well as desert preservation hikes, which include hiking Pinnacle Peak and planting a cactus to help conserve the desert wildlife.

Following the completion of a multimillion-dollar renovation in January, The Wigwam resort in Phoenix offers chili cook-offs, flag football games, express massages from the spa, and sessions with the resort’s Native American cultural interpreter, who hosts weeknight discussions about Arizona history, the sky, and desert life.

And the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa hosts Iron Chef-style Southwest cooking contests, as well as its “Building for a Cause” program, which gathers attendees to build bicycles for the children of the Gila River Indian community. 

“In addition to these, we have really focused on culinary education events here, taking advantage of our award-winning team [and] Native American-influenced menus,” says Stephanie Heckathorn, director of public relations and social media strategies for the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass. 

“Clearly it’s filling a need that the clients have,” Blubaum says of the interactive meeting options.  

If planners are considering creating “active meetings,” there are several things to keep  in mind. First and foremost, know your audience. “Know about likes, dislikes, what is appropriate, what is not important. Also, know what physical limitations there might be for your attendees,” Blubaum says.