Corporate Events Blog

Feeling brave? Try Parapenting

Ten80 have been hosting daily events throughout June that have truly made the most of Chamonix in the summer.  Daily, employees from an Energy trading company have been spoilt rotten, arriving in the morning the group are taken by guides to Col de Montets for a action packed morning. The activities along the way include shooting with .22 air rifles, archery with traditional bow and arrows, sawing a large log in half using a 2 man bow saw, and finally making a stretcher to carry one of the team to the finish line.  The groups then stop for a well deserved break at Buvet at the Cascade du Berard, where they’ve enjoyed a local Savoyard lunch, surrounded by the beauty of the mountains.

In the afternoon each guest can choose from a selection of activities (please look away now if you don’t want to be green with envy) including parapenting, golf, climbing and massages.  They then retire to a 5 star chalet, with its very own chef to cook an amazing evening meal coupled with great wine and spectacular views (especially from the hot tub).  Fancy spoiling your clients? Contact Ten80 Events to discuss how.

Test your aim with archery

Enjoy amazing views at Chamonixs Golf Course

Most conferences are held during summer months because of the longer, warmer days and general reliability of the weather. There are however many reasons why you would want to plan a winter conference e.g.

• Cost
• Venue availability
• Ease of travel
• Variety of extra activities

Winter Conference Costs

There is less pressure on accommodation and flight availability which in turn reduces the cost of getting your delegates to the venue

Winter Conference Venue Availability

Because many other businesses book in the summer, this makes winter availability more economical and viable

Winter Conference Ease of Travel

Flights and transport to your venue during summer months is more costly and harder to arrange due to the larger number of holidaymakers during this time

Winter Conference Variety of Extra Activities

If you plan to offer your delegates activities during the conference, you can have a wide variety of options available from skiing to mountain biking to mountain helicopter rides and so on

Choosing a location and venue

Picking a place to hold your conference can be one of the most crucial decisions you make as this influences the cost of travel, the availability and also the potential activities that are available to you once on site.

Thinking ‘outside the box’ here can have dramatic effect on the success of your conference. What are your delegates expecting? What overriding impression do you want them to take away?

Consider for example a winter conference held in a mountain resort. Places like Chamonix, France are just an hour away from Geneva airport and offer all the accommodation and venue options you could want, from small 20 person venues through to 500 plus attendees. Also on hand are extra curricular activities such as skiing, glacier walking, rock climbing, husky sledding and parapenting to name but a few.

The combination of a conference which motivates your delegates by mixing education and information together with exercise and or a sporting event is one of the most potent methods of delivering your message and keeping your business a the forefront of their minds.

The secret to planning a successful winter conference is meticulous planning and total attention to detail. If you would rather not take on the management of all the details, think about hiring a conference organiser who can.

Some of our clients may have met the snowboarding, record playing, photo taking man that is Charlie Davies last winter.  To add another string to his talented bow he has just climbed Mont Blanc for charity.  He and his friend Tom Wilson North climber Mont Blanc on the 24^th May for Great Ormond Street Charity.  The boys raised over £2,300 for the charity by climbing the Highest Mountain in Western Europe and snowboarding their way down.  They spent 6 weeks training for the event, snowshoeing local ski slopes and mountains.

The ascent began on Sunday afternoon and headed to the refuge before a 3am start on Monday morning to reach the summit.   They snowboarded down the north front of Mont Blanc, in choppy powder and ended their mission at Chambre Neuf for some very deserved celebratory pints.  To find out more about the climb visit Tom and Charlies sites.  Ten80 want to congratulate the guys on such an amazing achievement.

We don’t like blowing our own trumpet at the Ten80 Office but the Eco Expo last week was a great success.  We got involved with the event with Wendy Quarrie and a group of like minded people last summer, a change from our usual corporate events.   The event’s mission was to  ‘hold an event that will help people understand how to protect our environment, in particular the Chamonix Valley and therefore live, work, ski in and enjoy this beautiful area in a more sustainable way’ and it was achieved.  Exhibitors ranged from recycled ski’s (Idris Ski’s), organic hair care from le Salon to eco hot tubs from Action Outdoors.  If you’ve ever fancied building your own chalet, (I don’t think anyone in Chamonix hasn’t) then Renaud Chevaier with his company Chevallier Architects was on hand to help by giving ideas for eco chalet design.

Throughout the day we had presentations from great speakers.  One of the most popular talks was from WWF, providing scary statistics about the world’s carbon footprint and consumption levels, moving on to ideas about how we can help solve the problem.  Local’s could find out how to get involved in the community with CREA’s talk about research activities in the valley.  For those who had forgotten their geography GCSE  Luc Moreau was on hand to teach us all a little more about glaciers.  One of the last to present was Snow Carbon who promoted the use of trains to ski areas in their presentation, showing how the process can be made easy!

It was all finished off with some pints and recycled tunes at le Vert where people wore their old clothes and swapped to get a new outfit.  Perk of the job was having to sample le Verts Eco set menu with  locally sourced food,it was delicious and we toasted our organic wine to next year’s Eco Expo.

The Ten80 team through teary eyes waved goodbye to the last corporate ski trip of the winter season at the end of March.  This season Ten80 organised events in three countries, France, Italy and Austria, spent 35 days guiding clients around the mountains, went pareting 4 times and drank too many shots to count, all in the name of work.  We have all our clients to thank for such a first-rate winter season and we can’t wait for next year, although we are grateful for some rest before our summer events start.

Highlights of the season were Ten80′s very own Charlie singing at Chambre Neuf, apres ski at la Fruitiere in Val D’isere, the amazing skiing in St Anton, the 80′s party at le Jekyll, shakey face pictures, and of course the heli-paret.

Hip deep powder in Italy, V-Rockers in le tour, and fun in flegere this weekend had it all.  The long weekend away from the Ten80 office all started with a Flegere friday, le floria had been closed the day before so the snow was fresh as a daisy.  If you’re a person who likes throwing yourself off things or watching others do exactly that then this is the place for you.  There are loads of natural bumps and jumps around Flegere; including the infamous ‘tit’ which if you’re lucky you can catch people doing some ace tricks off.

Italy over the weekend had some of the deepest snow this season, Sunday started with flat light but steadily cleared throughout the day.  It was ridiculously deep and heavy snow which took it out on the old legs.  We decided to go for a bit if a challenge and tackled the monster mogul run and finished the day with, perhaps the best find of the season, a JD and coke in a can reward.

Monday I got to test out a different board, the Burton Joystick, a member of the V-rocker family.  Get’s its nose up in powder, easy peasy to turn on the pistes  and a sprinkling of pop  made it a very fun ride, it even stayed pretty stable for the track round to Vallorcine.  I was spoilt rotten this weekend.