As corporate wellness activities continue to generate buzz, we speak to Julia Green, Head of Corporate Events at Center Parcs Conferences & Events, about their increasing demand.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’d no doubt seen tonnes of headlines discussing mental health at work over the last few years. Work wellbeing is an issue which came under discussion heavily during the pandemic and has gone nowhere since. It’s no surprise then that this interest has spread into our industry, with corporate wellness experiences as part of an event – or even for team building – having experienced a massive surge in interest lately. This increased interest has led to Center Parcs Conferences & Events announcing its Twilight Spa Package for business clients, available as an add-on to any corporate event at the Sherwood Forest or Woburn Forest venue.
Julia Green, Head of Corporate Events at Center Parcs, tells us why this topic is on event organisers radar at the moment: “We’ve seen a real shift in events having a wellbeing element included in their agenda,” Julia explains. “From talking to companies and asking them why, they are taking stock of their work-life balance with many people working remotely, and they’ve said that attending a corporate event should be no different. So if the company ethos is that wellness is important, they want to bring that to their events as well. I think that remote and dynamic working means that people aren’t always together, and there is a big focus on reconnection.”
Offering wellness aspects to events is something that many event organisers can benefit from as it makes a great client incentive. Center Parc’s decision to lean into this aspect stems from client feedback received after an event: “We had a client recently at Center Parcs who came for a festival-style event. They did several mindful activities such as forest bathing, breath work, and mindful walks, as well as the spa. Their feedback was really key and it helped us drive this forward. They said that it fostered a sense of unity and inspired teams to connect in nature and strengthened their relationships with each other.”
Nowadays, a wide variety of different kinds of wellness activities are available, from more traditional offerings such as meditation and yoga, to the more unusual puppy rooms or flaneuring, and many of these are able to be incorporated into an event. However, having a wellbeing activity with a specific corporate focus may be the best way to entice clients and engage with delegates: “We had general wellness offerings already but we were finding that people just weren’t picking it up as a key element of their event. So we wanted to do something that shows our commitment to our corporate offering. We’re also looking into having smaller bitesize wellbeing options that we can bring into the venue.”