Lifestyle: Corporate away days – St George’s Park
CORPORATE away days have become big business with many firms seeing the attraction of taking their staff to a neutral venue for team bonding or brainstorming purposes.
A venue with a difference for away day purposes is St Georges Park on the outskirts of Burton on Trent in Staffordshire.
Its name may ring a bell if you’re a sports fan because St George’s is the Football Association’s new centre of excellence and home of English football.
The England team train and stay there before matches at Wembley Stadium.
The £105m facility is set in 330 acres of countryside and has 11 outdoor pitches including a replica of the Wembley surface, a full size indoor 3G pitch and a suite of rehabilitation and sports science areas and an indoor Futsal sports hall.
The attached Hilton at St George’s Park hotel is set up for businesses who want to use its facilities, with a ballroom that can stage events for up to 500 people and numerous smaller rooms for away day and internal meeting/conference purposes.
At the time of my visit corporate clients including Costcutter and Vauxhall were using the facilities. The hotel is full of England football memorabilia and the bedrooms all feature framed pictures of the players in action.
Perhaps the main attraction for businesses looking at St George’s Park for away day purposes is the ability to use the state of the art sport facilities.
The Future Game Experience, for example, includes a tour of the football facilities, use of an elite changing room, a two hour football-based activity session with an FA licensed coach and the use of the 3G pitch.
And what is especially appealing – if a little surprising – is that the place doesn’t close down when the England first team are in situ. So you could find yourself nodding to Wayne Rooney in the hotel’s corridor or eavesdropping on pearls of wisdom from England manager Roy Hodgson. And given that you can get there in less than an hour from Birmingham and in about two hours from Leeds and Manchester it’s an away day that shouldn’t mean you are on the motorway all day.
