An ‘Open Air’ interview with Darren Swayne, Founder of Elsewhere

“The market for offsites and team building events has been incredibly strong over recent years. Covid changed working practises everywhere and we believe the structural demand for internal corporate events has grown significantly.

When I founded Elsewhere in 2012 we found that a number of the creative industries looked for annual events with us, with the vast majority of clients seeing these type of events as a treat or celebration (or ad-hoc business need) rather than something more permanent. 

Fast forwarding to 2024, the offsites, away days, team building and internal conference market is seen as a vital way to bring teams physically together, to share information, to bond as a unit and to fire teams up for the future. Clients range across all sectors and these events are seen as a very important builder of culture.

Firms that previously didn’t see the need for an offsite are now reconsidering and a number of our clients are telling us that they are now looking to increase their events to two a year, from their previous one annual get-together. 

The common denominator across all Elsewhere clients is that everyone is looking for 'different'. The same old, same old corporate hotels and spaces market no longer wins by default. Being functional is no longer good enough. Clients are looking for some X-factor, some magic, a place that creates the backdrop to really motivate and get everyone excited about the future ahead. 

Outdoor Summer events is a huge component in meeting the demand for different and unusual corporate events. With a thriving festival scene in the U.K. very little education is needed to sell-in the benefits of a corporate having their own festival-style event. 

As a specialist in this area, we have spent 12 years building out our distribution. The venues and events industry is extremely fragmented and the hardest part for an event booker is to know of a venues existence. From our experience, clients are looking for a clean corporate story and this can often get lost on venue websites that can cover everything from weddings to wakes.

It became apparent to us very quickly that clients are looking for an experience, rather than space. In a market geared up to selling spaces this required a change in narrative. The right venues and spaces are vital for events to happen in and it's the event that clients are looking for. We think of it like going to the theatre- the theatre is important but the play is what you go for. The play and the theatre co-exist, hand in glove, to produce one fully-packaged product. This is what people actually want, rather than having to piece it all together themselves and reinvent the wheel. 

We believe that the event organiser needs to understand what business needs clients are trying to achieve with their event… essentially what’s the big idea behind it all? Of course the industry usually starts the other way around and builds up a picture of what can happen in the location. We believe that this is a huge opportunity to differentiate and have more meaningful conversations with clients.

On top of amazing unusual places and wonderful food, the extra elements that business customers require are best in class audio/ video, staging, corporate event management and team building know-how. These are very specific needs for corporates and we think the ability to talk their language and understand business needs is vital.

The flexibility that business needs is a big differentiator. Whilst a lot of clients have internal events organisers…most don’t. They have day jobs to do whilst at the same time co-ordinate their big event. They need to be walked through it all and at the same time reassured that they don’t need to have all of the answers straight away.

Whilst the event organiser and venue don’t always have to be the same firm, we believe that control is key. In our world, without control you are merely re-selling another persons product, which is only ever good to a point. It’s the control of the narrative and execution that allows for consistency and a truly reliable track record. 

We’re all about the experience and as corporate specialists , we’re here to help firms maximise their time together. We know the hospitality industry doesn’t think like that, and that’s why we built Elsewhere and have been growing swiftly since 2012.

The keywords for us are flexibility, responsiveness and detail.  Clients needs evolve and people can be hard to pin down. The broad brush strokes are normally there early on, but lots of essential detail can arrive days prior to the event. This is a big challenge as so many venues we have seen over the years try and impose the same type of processes that they use for weddings and other events onto their business clients. It simply doesn’t work and leads to frustration on both sides.

We offer a selection of venues and everything is within 2 hours of London, which is our point and focus. Events range from small working sessions with 5 people all the way to larger scale 200-400 people multi-day annual events.

Elsewhere all started at Hill House, an incredible Tudor Manor with 6 acres of grounds that my wife, Juliette, and I restored. Hill House was being rented out through an agent and I wanted to focus much more on the client experience, bringing a creative overlay and high level of service to an incredible building. 

From 2010 to 2012, revenues at Hill House tripled and more importantly the client feedback was extremely strong which pushed us into thinking bigger about the project.

Extraordinary escapism was born and we’re proud about what we are bringing to the party.”