Alpine vs Private Island
Two ways to run a company offsite, side by side — group size, budget, where each concentrates, and the estates worth booking.
Plan a RetreatAlpine
High-country lodges — summits, cold air, and big vistas.
- Venues
- 25 exclusive-buyout estates
- Typical group
- 2–500 guests
- Indicative budget
- $550–$1,100 pp/night
- Concentrated in
- Alpine Europe & Nordic · Mediterranean Europe · Western United States
- Best for
- leadership, team building, celebration
Private Island
Whole-island buyout — total privacy and a captive company.
- Venues
- 18 exclusive-buyout estates
- Typical group
- 10–500 guests
- Indicative budget
- $1,200–$2,350 pp/night
- Concentrated in
- Caribbean & Latin America · Australasia · Southeast Asia
- Best for
- leadership, celebration, team building
Bürgenstock Resort Lake Lucerne
A clifftop resort village 500 m above Lake Lucerne, Bürgenstock spans three hotels (~360 rooms) and a 2,200 m² conference centre seating up to 600 — among the largest premium large-group capacities in the Alps. Arrival by private lake boat and funicular is itself the opening ceremony. It absorbs a full 500-person company while still feeling like a private mountain.
Sun Valley Lodge
America's original destination mountain resort, opened 1936 and renovated in 2015, with 108 rooms and suites, the Sun Valley Inn, rental cottages, and a large convention center handling groups from 10 to 1,000. A summer-forward valley of hiking, cycling, and golf plus a 15-treatment-room spa anchors the retreat, with winter skiing on Bald Mountain.
Millbrook Resort
A 650-acre golf and lifestyle resort in the Wakatipu Basin under the Remarkables, with 160 rooms across studios, suites and resort homes — capacity for 350-plus guests and all four onsite restaurants privately bookable. It's the rare Queenstown property that can take a large group end-to-end while putting bungee, jet-boating, heli-wine and the Otago wine country all within reach. The Southern Alps do the rest.
Atlantis Paradise Island
The Caribbean's only true large-conference campus that still feels like a holiday: 500,000+ sq ft of meeting space, a 50,000-sq-ft Imperial Ballroom that seats 4,000, plus 11-acre Aquaventure waterscape, an open-air marine habitat, a Tom Weiskopf golf course and a 63-slip mega-yacht marina. This is the one tropical basecamp that genuinely absorbs even several-hundred-strong companies — and well beyond — without partner overflow.
InterContinental Hayman Great Barrier Reef
The northernmost private island in the Whitsundays, taken whole, with 182 rooms, suites and villas and 15 indoor/outdoor event venues across the property. Guests arrive by a 50-minute yacht transfer from Hamilton Island, which makes the whole offsite feel like an expedition the moment it begins. Whitehaven Beach and the outer Great Barrier Reef are day-trips by tender.
Petit St. Vincent
A 115-acre private island resort in the southern Grenadines with 22 one- and two-bedroom cottages spread across the hillsides and beaches, holding up to 56 guests. No phones or TVs in the cottages, seven beaches and a whole island for an executive group.