At the Mirror Lake Inn Resort and Spa, the possibilities are endless — including an atypical setting for meetings.

For most meetings, a major flag hotel in a downtown setting in a good-sized city makes perfect sense. Among other things, such a selection brings convenience, familiarity and a range of nearby options that serve attendees well. But there are some meetings that, by definition, require a more remote, serene environment, such as executive retreats or small leadership conferences.

And for those events, there is often no better destination than spectacular lakeside resorts along one of America’s beautiful waterfronts, with a long list of enticing options spanning the country.

‘Remote and Laidback’

When Honeywell Industrial Safety looks for a venue for its four-day midyear sales and marketing conference held each July, office manager Judy Lewis prefers what she calls “a more relaxed atmosphere.”

This year, she chose the 271-room Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, Wisconsin. The locally owned, 130-year-old resort has a shoreline that spans two miles of Delavan Lake and features 32,000 sf of meeting space, an 18-hole championship golf course, a full-service Calladora Spa, and three onsite restaurants. Other amenities include a tennis court, lawn games and variety of water sports. Popular lakeside activities include yoga and volleyball.

In terms of R&R, Lake Lawn Resort fit the bill perfectly.

“For this particular meeting, which takes place in the summer, we always look for a hotel that is more remote and laidback,” Lewis says. Honeywell Industrial Safety wants a property “that is conducive to networking and getting to know each other. We also want a place where everything we need is on-property and our attendees stay on-property — not a hotel in downtown Chicago, where there are so many distractions,” adds Lewis.

Free time for attendees is built into the meeting agenda in order to foster rest and rejuvenation. “We always have our meeting sessions end early in the afternoon,” Lewis says. “Then we have dinner at 6:30, so people also have some free time in the evening to relax. On the second day, we did a teambuilding event at the hotel, right on the lakefront so people could relax and be together as a group. And that event included a kayak relay race on the lake.”

The hotel also built a lakeside bonfire every night. “Some attendees also participated in fishing off the pier, and others took boats out on the lake,” Lewis says. “There were also some people who came in a day early and played golf. We also have runners in our group and there’s a path along the lake that’s very nice. And you can also ride a bike along the path.”

For fun, Lewis hosted a casino night in a ballroom. “Everybody really enjoyed that,” she says.

She also staged an outside, lakeside dinner on the last night. “The hotel did a really nice job,” she says. “That was definitely one of the highlights of the meeting.”

After the meeting, Lake Lawn Resort generated very positive feedback from attendees. “Everybody really liked the hotel,” Lewis says. “They said this was our best meeting ever. So based on that feedback, we’ll definitely consider going back.”

The Lakes of New York

Jessica Tamburrini, CMP, is senior meeting planner at Victor, New York-based Constellation Brands Inc., whose prestigious wine and beer brands include Robert Mondavi, Kim Crawford and Corona. When she wants a venue that is nearby but removed from distractions, she opts for the 134-room Inn on the Lake Resort & Conference Center at Canandaigua Lake, one of New York state’s fabled Finger Lakes. For small groups of management executives, Inn on the Lake offers eight luxurious lakeside jacuzzi suites. The property features two dining options, The Shore Restaurant and The Sand Bar Lakeside Bar & Grille, as well as a lounge and fitness studio. A special amenity is a lakeside tent for special events, such as receptions or lakeside dinners.

Nearby offsite venues include the New York Wine & Culinary Center, Finger Lakes Gaming and Racetrack, and Bristol Mountain Ski Resort.

In recent years, Inn on the Lake has become a go-to venue for Constellation Brands. “I am just one of the meeting planners for the company that uses it,” Tamburrini says. “A number of our other planners also use it as a venue. I personally use it over the course of the year as many as a dozen times.”

Why is the hotel so popular?

In addition to meeting the precise requirements for a number of her smaller meetings, Tamburrini says, the old-school lakefront offers a unique and charming ambience. “It’s an inn rather than a hotel,” she says. “It has old wood finishes, for example. The rooms are very simple, but they’re very quaint.”

The fact that Inn on the Lake is a quaint, laidback resort in a fairly remote location is perceived as a clear benefit for a number of her meetings, Tamburrini says. “We want to keep people engaged in the meeting and have fewer distractions, so it’s very convenient to have everything we need right there at the inn and be located on a nice lake. It’s a self-contained environment, so there’s really no need to go offsite.”

“We want to keep people engaged in the meeting and have fewer distractions, so it’s very convenient to have everything we need right there at the inn and be located on a nice lake.” — Jessica Tamburrini

It also offers a serene setting with fresh air for attendees on their breaks. “You can take a walk on one of the paths around the lake,” Tamburrini says,  and relax and enjoy the scenery.”

Yet another benefit of Inn on the Lake — and a feature that Constellation Brands requires for all of its meetings — is that the hotel’s restaurants and bars stock the company’s brands, such as Mondavi wines and Corona beer.

For her most recent meeting, Tam­burrini used the nearby New York Wine & Culinary Center for a cooking-based teambuilding event led by a trained chef. For after-hours recreation, she bought out the upper deck of the  Canandaigua Lady for a dinner cruise on the lake.

“Another unique aspect of the Inn on the Lake is a great outdoor bar/restaurant area that generates a lot of buzz for happy hour,” Tamburrini says. “They also have a beautiful tent right on the lake that holds about 250 people. So we used the tent for some nice evening dinners, which we have done before.” The tent is perfect for refreshing lakeside receptions, she adds.

All in all, she says, Inn on the Lake offers the perfect mix of amenities for a relaxing, enjoyable meeting.

Another prized lakefront resort location in New York state is Lake Placid, site of the 1980 Winter Olympics. A meeting planner, who wishes to remain anonymous, selected for her executive retreat the Mirror Lake Inn Resort and Spa. The locally owned property on Mirror Lake features three dining establishments: The AAA Four Diamond The View Restaurant; the casual Taste Bistro and Bar and the indoor/outdoor pub at the Cottage Café. Each afternoon, the hotel offers afternoon tea and chocolate chip cookies. It also features a world-class spa and salon.

Like the other planners we interviewed for this article, the planner chose a remote, quiet venue for her meetings because of their high-end nature and need for relaxation, since her attendees often work in a high-stress environment. Many of the 131 units spread among three buildings and seven acres feature stunning views of the lake. In addition, guests can enjoy the resort’s private beach or cruise on Mirror Lake in style using one of the boats that the resort provides on a complimentary basis.

‘A Spectacular Place’

Every year for the last eight years, Kimberly Egelhoff, meeting planner for Abercrombie & Fitch in New Albany, Ohio, has used the Basin Harbor Club on Lake Champlain in Vergennes, Vermont for one of the company’s most important meetings — its annual three-day retreat each October for about 300 regional and district managers from all over the world, with about 30 percent of attendees arriving from outside the U.S.

Set on 700 acres, the 128-year-old, family-owned Basin Harbor Club, which is open seasonally from early May through late October, features four guest houses and lodges, as well as 77 individual cottages that dot the scenic shoreline. The resort includes an 18-hole golf course, clay and Har Tru tennis courts, a fitness center, four restaurants, water sports and nature trails. It also boasts a Wine Spectator Award-winning wine list.

Like the other planners, Egelhoff says a major reason for her use of the property is its peace and quiet.

“There are actually a lot of reasons why we like it so much,” Egelhoff says. “But one major one is logistical. We can take over the entire resort, which we do. And we can do anything on-property that we want. They are very accommodating. And no matter what kind of crazy thing we come up with to do, they accommodate us every year and make it happen.”

For example, as a teambuilding exercise, Egelhoff’s attendees have built soap box derby cars and raced them down a nearby hill. She also has staged a resort-wide scavenger hunt based on the TV show “The American Race.”

Boating on the lake is a particularly popular free-time activity. A number of attendees also manage to get in a round of golf.

The R&R aspect of the meeting in a secluded, relaxing location is very important to attendees, Egelhoff says, because immediately after the meeting comes the holiday season, the busiest and most stressful time of the year for attendees.

“They could not love the place more, because they really get away from everything right before a very stressful time,” Egelhoff says. “It also gives them a chance to be with their peers and relax and just enjoy how beautiful the place is, especially at that time of year.”

As a planner, Egelhoff also raves about the service she gets every year from Basin Harbor Club.

“In addition to the location, the people at the venue are the most important part of any event,” she says. “And the staff at Basin Harbor Club are the best, bar none. And that’s true of both the owners and the staff. I absolutely love them.”

In fact, the property is so spectacular that attendees often go back on their own. “We’ve even had people get married there,” Egelhoff says. “It’s just a gorgeous property that holds a special place in our hearts. It’s just an ideal setting for a meeting.”

‘A Well-Kept Secret’

For 25 years, Dallas, Texas-based Marvin F. Poer Company, a privately held property tax consulting firm, has been holding its most important annual meeting, a conference for its senior management and top salespeople from 14 U.S. offices that draws about four dozen attendees, in a resort setting. One reason: a golf tournament that has become a much-anticipated tradition.

For the company’s most recent meeting, Anne Lucas, executive assistant to the CEO, chose the AAA Four Diamond, 405-room Resort at Squaw Creek, located near Squaw Valley. The  resort, operated by highly respected Destination Hotels & Resorts, features a golf course, tennis courts and spa.

“In the past, we have been to the south (shore) of Lake Tahoe and stayed at Harrah’s,” Lucas says. “So we wanted to go back to Lake Tahoe. Everyone loves the location. But nobody knew about the north shore. It’s a well-kept secret.”

The North Lake Tahoe CVB assisted Lucas in finding the property. “We worked with a gentleman named Jason Neary, and he did a great job for us,” she says.

The site selection is especially important to this particular meeting, Lucas says. “One reason is that the average tenure with the company of attendees is probably 25+ years. And they are all of our senior leaders from around the country. The meeting only takes place once a year and part of it is a sort of reward. It’s also the only time of year where everyone gets together. It also includes our golf tournament and awards banquet, which are very significant events for us. So when we take all of that into account, we just want to do it in a very nice place.”

At Resort at Squaw Creek, about 30 of the 48 attendees played in the opening day golf tournament. Others went to the spa or just relaxed in the refreshing mountain setting.

A highlight of the meeting was a lakeside dinner at Garwood’s, an upscale restaurant serving a mixed menu of contemporary cuisine. It features a private dining room. “It’s known for its spectacular setting,” Lucas says. “You can watch the sun set over the lake. And we also chartered a boat for an hour-long cruise before dinner.” Garwood’s also catered the food for the cruise. We just had a great evening,” Lucas says.

The awards banquet, hosted at the hotel, was another highlight of the meeting.

Both Lucas and her attendees gave the Resort at Squaw Creek top marks for its performance.

“We do a post-conference survey on every aspect of the meeting,” Lucas says. “And the comments we got on Resort at Squaw Creek included things like ‘The accommodations and food were excellent,’ ‘Golf was superb,’ and ‘This was the best annual meeting I’ve been to in years with the firm — excellent choice.’ ”

Lucas’ positive feedback echoes the sentiments of most attendees who have had the opportunity to retreat to serene lakeside resorts for a healthy dose of renewal and reinvigoration. C&IT