Corporate Retreats, Events, and Training

Excite your Team with a Smoky Mountain Adventure and Mountain Hospitality

Inspiring Creativity in your Team

According to color psychologists, the color blue helps encourage people to think outside the box. Since blue is heavily associated with nature, peace, and tranquility, the color tends to help people feel safe to explore and be creative.

Imagine your team surrounded by blue skies and the mountains of the Blue Ridge in the Smoky Mountains. Imagine doing workshops in nature by a bubbling creek. At the Meadowlark Motel we strive for a creative place. We have blue accent walls in every room, original artwork, stimulating amenities, and resident musicians. Your Smoky Mountain Retreat Starts with Where You Stay.

Treat your Employees to a Creative Experience at the Meadowlark Motel in Maggie Valley, N.C. Call 828-928-1717 or Contact Us for additional Information

Retaining Employees and Building a Corporate Culture

In the tough economic world of today, hiring the right employee is critical to the success of any business. But retaining those employees’ long term is even more challenging and is equally as important—if not more so.

Jobs good paying jobs –are abundant. But it isn’t just about the money, it is about creating the right sort of work place culture –and that begins and ends with training. Employees today not only expect good pay and benefits, but they want to feel a sense of ownership, a sense of belonging, and they want to feel valued as a person. They want to know that their opinion counts and is important. They don’t want to be alone in the water.

Creating the correct corporate culture begins with ownership and upper management. It then spreads throughout the company instilling confidence throughout the work place as everyone KNOWS they are valued.

It isn’t just talk. It is demonstrated daily in how team members are treated, how they are trained and how the company conducts daily operations demonstrating their core values daily.

Avoid Expensive with the Non-Traditional

It wasn’t that long ago that AIG made headlines for having one of the most expensive corporate retreats ever, spending more than $400,000 at the St. Regis Resort and Spa in California over the course of a few days and giving this beneficial component of business a bad rap.

But the fact is, corporate retreats don’t have to be a luxury item in order to feel like one.

While many companies might defer to all-inclusive resort properties that cost a fortune to book or swanky casinos with lots of added fees, there are ways to find the right look and feel for the right price.

The bottom line of corporate retreats is that they can be out of the ordinary, offering trainings in an inspired environment (rather than a board room) while providing relaxing amenities that let guests recharge as well as entertainment and activities that boost morale and build trust amongst colleagues.

What out of the ordinary comes down to at the venue level is best described as non-traditional.

What is more non-traditional than an “Appalachian Chic” road-side motel with country inn amenities and a 3 acre wooded recreation area by a mountain heritage trout stream. A place with a Pavilion that harkens to old mountain dance halls and a SpeakEasy inspired by the New York City underground.

A place with mountain heritage food updated with slight modern twists. Where old-time-music by Grammy-winning artists meets new world music by rock-n-roll legends. A place with art shows and history presentations.

The Meadowlark Motel is like no other place. It is perfect for your non-traditional corporate retreat and employee training.

Find Out More

Demonstrate You Care

Research has shown that the first step in ensuring the success of any efficient and productive corporate training, management training session, or any sort of retreat or long-range planning session is to conduct the event outside or away from the traditional office or work space. There are multiple reasons for this:

Moving training off premises eliminates any work place distractions — personal or professional. It allows the group to focus entirely on training objectives without being bothered by daily operations issues, phone calls or other interruptions. And while it can be more expensive, it will more than pay for itself in results and the ROI is huge.
Off site training has been proven to be much more productive — due to better utilization of time and training resources, but it also makes for a more relaxed, fun and enjoyable event –an expereince much more conducive to learning, with improved productivity in a shorter time frame.
Moreover, it provides an invaluable bonding and team building experience as participants are taken out of their traditional work place “comfort zones.” It forces them –in a nice and politically correct manner – to personally interact with their co-workers on a more personal level, thus enhancing their personal and professional communication skills while building mutual respect with each other by learning things they have in common as human beings.
Off site retreats allow for more interactive training sessions. Experiential interactive, hands-on learning –things that make the event much more memorable and worthwhile for team members – are essential to successful training programs of any kind. Teams will take the interactive skills learned here and utilize them daily in the work place — the ultimate goal for any successful training platform.
The more exclusive the training location and interactive program design, the better. Why? As noted, this sort of training sticks with participants for decades to come. They don’t forget what they learned. They return to their work place and homes not only sharing that new-found expertise with their teammates and friends, but they return feeling appreciated, valued and rewarded. After all, their employer just spent a significant amount of time and money in investing in their future by personally providing them with skills and memories that they will carry with them for life.

The most successful Fortune 500 companies in the world today—as well as many that soon will be –all possess these attributes. And it begins with training—even during the hiring and screening process- and that training never stops. Ever.

But not only is creative, experiential training of the utmost importance, the location of the off- site training is equally as important. Why? Because it shows the employee that the company truly cares about them by taking them to a unique location, with special amenities to train—at no expense to the employee.

Memorable Experience

Results have shown that the experience is further enhanced when the training is done during the traditional work week—Monday thru Friday—never on weekends. Time that participants are paid for—and it is not done during their personal time off, thus further proving the team member’s value to the company and the respect the company has for them.

Team members can actually—often for the first time—experience business with pleasure. And again, create a memorable experience that they can use for life—but even more importantly they will feel personally VALUED. They will feel that the company cares about them, values their opinion, and wants to invest in them as a long-term employee.

These types of things often make the difference in an organization’s ability to retain long term team members. You can’t put a dollar figure on that, but they are critical to your success.

Amenities and Venue:

Your home base, the Meadowlark Motel, is tucked away in one of the world’s most beautiful locations, the Great Smoky Mountains, and sits along a stocked mountain heritage trout stream, a recreation area with numerous fire pits, an outdoor stage, and includes multiple meeting rooms, our own speakeasy bar and restaurant. It is just minutes away from the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Biltmore House, the Appalachian Trail, world class restaurants, rafting, museums and elite music venues! The Asheville Airport is less than an hour away. The Knoxville Airport is a little more than an hour. Shuttles can be arranged from the airport and we have a partnership with world-class corporate travel agency Blue Orange Travel to make all the arrangements you might need.

Retreat Assistance Available:

We can create interactive outdoor and indoor training programs, along with team building exercises designed especially for your needs.
Guided tours— and other special entertainment options and exclusive activities.
Heritage themed seminars and classes—some of them interactive—all of them fun!
All catering needs can be met, including food, tables, chairs, A/V equipment, photography and more.
Music, Entertainment, Art and Educational programs can be arranged.

And what better place to conduct your off- site training or company retreat than the Meadowlark Motel in Maggie Valley, N.C. Call 828-928-1717 or Contact Us for additional Information