Lake vs Countryside
Two kinds of place, side by side — who each one suits, what each one costs, and where they concentrate. The setting decides the tone of the whole week, so it is worth deciding on purpose.
Design a retreatLake
Waterfront calm — docks, boats, and reflective quiet.
- Venues
- 36 private estates
- Typical group
- 24–500 guests
- Indicative budget
- $425–$800 pp/night
- Concentrated in
- Alpine Europe & Nordic · Northeastern United States · Mediterranean Europe
- Best for
- celebration, leadership, team building
Countryside
Pastoral estates — manor houses, gardens, and slow luxury.
- Venues
- 28 private estates
- Typical group
- 15–500 guests
- Indicative budget
- $700–$1,300 pp/night
- Concentrated in
- British Isles · Southeastern United States · Mediterranean Europe
- Best for
- leadership, strategy, team building
The Coeur d'Alene Resort
A 338-room lakefront resort on Lake Coeur d'Alene with the scale most lake venues can't touch: 32,000+ sq ft of meeting space, a Hagadone Event Center seating 800 indoor/outdoor, and a Lakeview Terrace for 500. It is the rare lake basecamp that can buy out for a true several-hundred-strong company and still feel like a resort, not a convention center — anchored by the world's only floating golf green.
Grand Geneva Resort & Spa
A 1,300-acre Lake Geneva resort with the largest meeting footprint on this list — 62,000 sq ft of event space for 10 to 1,500 — plus 387 main-lodge rooms and 225 suites at the adjacent Timber Ridge. The most operationally bulletproof choice for a genuine 300–500-person U.S. retreat within 90 minutes of Chicago, with two golf courses, a ski hill, and the lake resort town next door.
The Abbey Resort
The only full-service resort on the shore of Wisconsin's Lake Geneva, with 334 rooms and 40,000 sq ft of flexible meeting space. A marina, spa and lakefront grounds make it a Midwest workhorse for large all-hands within a two-hour drive of Chicago and Milwaukee.
Gleneagles
A storied Scottish estate on 850 acres of glen — a grand hotel with its own railway stop, falconry school, shooting school, and three championship golf courses.
Borgo Egnazia
A resort built as a Puglian village of whitewashed courtyards, 182 rooms across La Corte, the Borgo and standalone houses, with 11 meeting rooms handling groups to 500. Site of the 2024 G7 summit, with a championship golf course, spa and Puglian countryside all around.
Pinehurst Resort
The cradle of American golf — ten courses in the Carolina pines, a grand village resort, and the home of multiple U.S. Opens.