Team building in Chile: what you can do within two hours of Santiago

The advantage of running team building in Chile out of Santiago is geographic and badly underrated: in under two hours you have snow at 3,000 metres, a river with rapids, wineries over a hundred years old, and the Pacific. There are not many capitals where a team can leave at eight in the morning, ski, and be back for dinner in the city.

We run these programmes all year, so this is not a list of ideas pulled off the internet. It is what works, with which group, and in which month.

The mountains, June to September

It is the activity that integrates a team fastest, for a simple reason: nobody skis well on day one. The director and the person who joined two months ago both start from zero, both fall over, and both laugh. You cannot produce that in a meeting room.

Valle Nevado, Farellones and El Colorado are between an hour and a half and two hours from Santiago, and the comparison between the three matters more than it seems with a large group: price, altitude and class sizes all differ.

Two things ruin the day if they were not planned for: altitude, because Valle Nevado sits above 3,000 metres and some people feel it, especially if they flew in that same week; and part of the group not wanting to ski. That is what the alternatives are for, and in the snow there are plenty. The detail is in team building in the snow near Santiago.

The Cajón del Maipo, September to April

An hour and a half from the centre, and the fullest day you can build without sleeping away: rafting in the morning, lunch, then hot springs or the El Yeso reservoir in the afternoon.

Rafting is the activity that exposes most about how a team works. In a boat there is one instruction, very little time to carry it out, and an immediate consequence if half the boat paddles differently. Nobody can delegate it. We go into it in team building in the Cajón del Maipo, with the real timings of a day like that.

The wineries, all year

They are under an hour from Santiago and work very well as a closing, not as the centrepiece. A winery visit or a long lunch does not build a team on its own, but it is where people talk about what happened during the day.

For a season close or an awards evening, a sunset at a vineyard solves the last afternoon with no early start. If the group is genuinely interested in wine, the wineries near Santiago have half-day visits.

The coast and the city

Valparaíso and Viña del Mar are an hour and a half away, and they suit a large group with very mixed fitness: everyone can walk a Valparaíso hill or have lunch facing the sea, which is not true of rafting. Further north, Zapallar and Cachagua are quieter and work for a small leadership group.

Inside Santiago, a guided route or an afternoon built around food is the lowest-friction option when time is short and the group lands from several cities on the same day.

What to choose by objective

• Integrating a new team or two merged departments: snow in winter, hiking or rafting in summer. What matters is that the activity forces people to depend on each other.
• Improving coordination and execution: rafting, with nothing close behind.
• Rewarding, celebrating or closing a year: a winery, the coast, a dinner done properly.
• A large, very mixed group: the coast, the city, or snow with options for non-skiers.

Team building activities and what each one is good for covers what each activity does to a team, which is the question that comes before where to hold it.

The Chilean calendar, month by month

• June to September: snow. July is the most expensive and most crowded month, because it overlaps with the school holidays. August usually has better snow with fewer people.
• September to November: the best window of the year for a company event. The river runs well with the snowmelt, there is still snow at altitude, the vineyards are in flower, and prices sit below peak season.
• December to March: hot in Santiago, which is exactly the reason to get out. Cajón del Maipo, the coast and the wineries. It is also end-of-year season, and the end-of-year company event in Santiago covers the formats that work best, with December booked out from October.
• April and May: autumn, good weather and few people. Underrated.

The mistakes we see again and again

• One compulsory activity for everyone. There is always someone who cannot or does not want to, and with no alternative planned that person spends the day apart and tells the story back at the office.
• Working out transfers from a map. A loaded bus does not move like a car, getting fifty people on and off adds real minutes, and the mountain road has a checkpoint that can hold the whole group.
• Three activities in one day. It is not triple the team building. It is a tired group that talked to nobody.
• No weather plan B. In the Andes an outing falls through with two hours' notice, and plan B is quoted alongside plan A, not improvised the night before.

Before asking for a proposal

What an operator actually needs in order to build something serious: what the event is for, how many people and their age and fitness profile, the date or date range, and whether there is a working session that needs a room. With that you get a real proposal. Without the objective you get a generic itinerary, which is what arrives when all you said was "we want to do team building".

If the event includes a meeting as well as an activity, the company convention checklist covers rooms, catering and transfers. And if the trip itself is the reward, how to organise an incentive trip sets the order of decisions.