Desert 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 RetreatDesert
Sculpted stillness — spa mornings, star fields, and clean lines.
- Venues
- 24 exclusive-buyout estates
- Typical group
- 12–500 guests
- Indicative budget
- $600–$1,250 pp/night
- Concentrated in
- Africa & Middle East · Western United States · Mountain United States
- Best for
- leadership, celebration, team building
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
Enchantment Resort
Cradled inside the red-rock walls of Boynton Canyon, a low-slung resort surrounded by trailheads, a renowned canyon spa, and some of the most photographed terrain in America.
La Mamounia
The legendary 1923 palace-hotel — ~209 rooms, 17 acres of walled Moorish gardens, and a 450m² Grand Salon seating ~350 theatre. La Mamounia is the rare Marrakech address that combines true plenary scale with palace theatre: a gala in the gardens, a desert excursion to the Agafay, a hammam-and-souk afternoon as breakouts.
Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North
A casita resort tucked into the Sonoran Desert at the foot of Pinnacle Peak, with 210 rooms and suites spread across low adobe-style buildings among saguaros. Its scale and meeting space make it a workhorse for larger companies that still want desert quiet and Troon North golf next door.
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.