Why the Smartest Meeting Planners Are Booking Vermont This Summer
Every June, something predictable happens to meeting planners. They start checking attendance projections and quietly panicking.
Summer is supposed to be a season of energy and possibility.
Instead, it becomes a season of excuses: the kids are at camp, the in-laws are visiting, the beach is calling. For the planner who has spent months building an agenda, securing a keynote speaker, and negotiating room blocks, a half-empty conference room is not just disappointing. It is expensive.
Diane Lovell has heard the concern enough times to recite it back almost word for word. And she has a completely different take on it.
The Calendar Is Not the Problem
Meeting planners do not struggle with summer because people stop caring about work in July.
They struggle because the traditional corporate event model asks attendees to pretend summer is not happening. Sit in a ballroom. Watch the slides. Eat the rubber chicken. Ignore the fact that it is 75 degrees and sunny outside.
That tension does not disappear when you ignore it. It just turns into distractions, early departures, and the glazed expression of someone already mentally at the pool.
"There's a lot of summer distractions that really meeting planners tend to shy away from," says Lovell, "because it really can impact the attendance numbers for whatever conference they're working so hard to plan."
The instinct to fight summer is understandable. The instinct is also wrong.
Research on meeting effectiveness backs this up. A study published on ScienceDirect found that even brief exposure to natural settings improves cognitive function and working memory. When people are stuffed into windowless conference rooms during peak summer months, they are not just bored. They are physiologically less equipped to retain information, generate ideas, or connect with colleagues.
When the Resort Is the Reason They Show Up
There is a specific type of venue problem that no amount of themed breakout sessions can fix: the venue that asks attendees to choose between the meeting and their family. In the summer, that choice is real. Kids are home. Schedules are loose. The calculus of "is this trip worth it" gets recalculated every single time.
Lovell's pitch flips the equation entirely. "We have plenty to offer for activities here in the Manchester area," she explains. "Planners can help maintain attendee engagement because they can bring their whole family here. Their whole family can have something to do during the day while they're closeted away in some kind of a conference room having a meeting, and then they can join their family at the end of the day to go do something really fun and fabulous right here."
That is not a small thing. The "bring the family" option transforms the cost-benefit calculation an attendee runs in their head. The trip stops being a work obligation that competes with summer. It becomes the summer trip, with meetings attached.
It also changes who holds the leverage. When the venue itself is a draw, attendance pressure eases. People want to be there.
Shakespeare, Ax Throwing, and the Actual Point of Team Building
Here is what most corporate team-building gets wrong: it is engineered. The trust fall, the ropes course, the workshop where you build a catapult out of rubber bands. Everyone knows it is a team-building exercise, which means everyone is slightly performing their way through it rather than actually connecting.
What Lovell describes at the Equinox is structurally different. "We have fly fishing. We have clay shooting. We have Shakespeare in the Woods. We have hiking. We have yoga. We have summer concerts. We have glassblowing, ax throwing, photography workshops, painting workshops."
These are not exercises designed to simulate collaboration. They are experiences that produce it as a byproduct. When a CFO and a junior analyst are both trying to cast a fly rod for the first time, they are equally incompetent, equally delighted, and talking to each other like human beings. That is worth more than any structured debrief.
Lovell connects this directly to the meeting itself: "Groups can actually come here and be more engaged with each other because they are sharing in some of these experiences that they get to do outside." The activities are not a reward at the end of a productive day. They are part of what makes the day productive.
The Outdoor Meeting Is Underrated and Underused
One of the more practical insights buried in Lovell's comments is about format, not just location. "One of the things that our summer groups really enjoy is taking the meeting outside. It gets to be a lot more personalized as opposed to having a screen with a PowerPoint slide and all these different videos and presentations."
That is not just a vibe preference. Meeting science has been circling this conclusion for years. A Stanford study found that walking increases creative output by roughly 81 percent compared to sitting. Movement and fresh air are not distractions from thinking. They are inputs to it.
When the default format is a screen and a deck, the meeting is designed around the presenter. When you take it outside, the meeting is designed around the conversation. Those two things produce very different outcomes.
The Reframe That Changes Everything
Summer does not have to be the season meeting planners dread. It can be the season with the highest-quality outcomes, if the setting does the right kind of work.
The venues that win summer events are not the ones with the most breakout rooms or the highest AV budgets. They are the ones that give attendees a reason to actually show up, a place to bring the people they would otherwise be at home with, and enough variety outside the conference room to make the inside feel worth it.
"There's just so much that we have to offer," Lovell says, with the tone of someone who has made this case before and watched it land.
She is not wrong. The grass in southern Vermont is, by her account, emerald green right now. The ax throwing is available. The PowerPoint will keep.
Your Summer Event Deserves a Better Setting
The Equinox Golf Resort & Spa in Manchester, Vermont is built for exactly this. Meetings that actually move. Activities that bring teams together without forcing it. Enough space, scenery, and things to do that your attendees stop counting down to checkout and start wondering how to extend their stay.
If you are planning a summer event and want attendance that holds and engagement that sticks, start the conversation with the Equinox team. They have done this before. They know what works.
Have questions or ready to start planning? Reach out to our team here >>