Corporate and Groups
Why Arblaster & Clarke and why a wine event?
Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tours make great incentives and corporate hospitality events. They blend exclusivity and excitement in a focused environment, offering your guests a highly aspirational experience. The event can be very sociable, businesslike or both. If the event is to be offered to invited delegates, the level of acceptance is likely to be very high. Your guests may not have been on a wine tasting tour before and if they have it will not have been to the level that we supply. The trip will prove to be very memorable. Your delegates and staff will talk about the event for days, weeks, even years afterwards.
Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tours can arrange a corporate wine tour almost anywhere in the world. We have experience at organising trips as Incentives, Corporate Hospitality, Small Conferences and Press-trip/product launch.
We have 22 years of experience in arranging top level wine tours. We know the regions extremely well and have built up valuable relationships with French wine chateaux, with the Champagne Houses and wine producers throughout the world. In all the regions we have inspected the full range of accommodation available and are able to discuss the most suitable base for your event, from a small luxury chateau to modern town centre hotels. We employ a multi-linugal, highly knowledgeable team.
Ideas for destinations include Champagne for a day trip or weekend; Bordeaux likewise for a day trip or a longer stay, perhaps based in a top chateau; taking over a Castello in Chianti; or being based at a Barolo estate or Rioja Bodega. The trip could also include relaxing at a spa, enjoying opera or concerts, walking, cycling or golf or have an educational content such as a wine course. We can charter a private plane for you, book you Club or First class tickets or of course you can choose to travel by train or car.
We are fully bonded and licensed – and as a professional business in these difficult financial times you should be aware of the risks involved in dealing with companies who do not afford you full financial protection via bonding. http://www.winetours.co.uk/consumer-protection. You can pay us by credit card (including American Express), bank transfer or cheque and in sterling, US dollars or euros – according to where you are based.
.
Superb Event Organisation
Arblaster & Clarke’s wine tours are the crème de la crème of wine tours, with exclusive visits, expert guides and unrivalled service, that ensures every tour is a resounding success. We apply this same ethos to our Corporate Travel Wine Tours service and we will pitch the content to the right level for your clients or staff. As well as knowing which venues can physically handle your event, we know which are the most interesting cellars to visit and how to get the most out of them for you. As well as arranging great wine tastings, we can choose superb wines to pair with gourmet meals.
Conferences and Seminars
Some wine estates and hotels in the wine regions have conference facilities. The options for small conferences are extensive, with some venues that are exceptionally interesting for intimate seminars with only the focused distraction of wine. For larger conferences they are much more limited but there are some very interesting possibilities. *See Case Studies* below.
Training in choosing Wine or Wine Making as a team
An option is to build some training into the event, or even make this the core of the trip.
Another option is to actually get involved in the harvest. We can do this on several levels, from cutting a few grapes to working as a team and actually making a batch of (very high quality) wine. *See Case Studies* below.
.
Popular Wine Tasting Day Trips
The Champagne Flight for a corporate group
Treat your clients to a unique day out in Champagne. Jet off in a private plane to a gastronomic lunch in the cellars of Champagne!
More on Corporate Hospitality in Champagne
The Bordeaux Flight for a corporate group
This is another of our perennially popular incentive day trips. Whisk your party off to lunch in one of Bordeaux’s most prestigious châteaux.
More on Corporate Hospitality in Bordeaux
Arblaster and Clarke Wine Tours is a fully licensed and bonded Tour Operator. The financial protection afforded by these bonds does extend to our Commercial Clients. This is often not the case, but is a requirement for members of AITO. (The Association of Independent Tour Operators).
When you call A&C to discuss your corporate event, you will speak to someone in our team who knows the possibilities, the areas, the hotels, the local specialities and the wines and how to make them work for you.
For your corporate hospitality quote call Lynette Arblaster or Elly Dean on 01730 263111, or e-mail tours@winetours.co.uk
.
Case Studies
A Product Launch
We were asked to stage a press launch for one of the world’s leading cosmetics companies. Our brief was to provide a fitting platform for the launch of their new line (a moisturiser based on grape extracts) to the key beauty journalists.
The initial thoughts from the client had been to use either Chablis (because of it’s ‘purity’) or Bordeaux (because it is such an important French wine centre). However they were uncertain about the choice of venue and felt they needed specialist help which was why we became involved.
We argued that Bordeaux should not be used because another wine based beauty product was already produced there and associated with it, and that by going to Bordeaux the journalists would be reminded of the existence of this. We thought that Chablis would not be interesting to the beauty journalists. Our suggestion was a two-day event at a lovely wine estate hotel in Provence, taking it over entirely.
The event was a resounding success with every journalist who was invited attending. Everyone was delighted with the setting, some of the Journalists so much so, that they wanted to come back for their holidays. The product launch exceeded the client’s expectations.
.
An Industry Conference
In the aftermath of 9/11 a client charged us with delivering a high level small conference. The brief was a complex one; the client, a leading merchant bank, was hosting an important symposium with senior members of the Insurance industry and their own organisation. They needed to offer an environment that was conducive to both industry and relaxation. The travel arrangements of these VIP delegates had to be coordinated too.
- We delivered a fully operational conference venue in a château deep in the countryside near St Emilion. Social events included dinner at a St Emilion Grand Cru Classé château and an exclusive wine fête in the 12th century Cloisters in St Emilion. Attendees who had been to many conferences before, told both us and the Client that this was by far the best event that they had taken part in.
.
An ‘team building’ event
The client, a major British airline wanted to stage an incentive for their most important Business Travel Agents. They had decided that a wine event would be interesting, both to their own managers and the owners of the agencies.
Rather than suggesting say Bordeaux with a ‘team building event’ or a round of golf (which in other circumstances we might have done), we suggested Austria.
Here the airline executives and agents selectively harvested grapes, working as a team, pressed the grapes and started the wine-making process. They had made the first Beerenauslese of the year in Austria! (an extremely prestigious and expensive sweet wine). The hard work was followed by a gourmet lunch of course. The barrel that the wine went into was engraved with a carving which has been seen by thousands of people. The airline were able a year later to send the wine to the agents.
The original plan had been to run just one trip but the first was enjoyed so much by everyone, that two more were run.
