When September rolls around each year in Hopkins, Belize, the streets get a lot quieter. This is the start of slow season for us. Many hotels and restaurants in our area will close down for a month or two. We typically close for two weeks, which allows our staff to take a break and allows us to do some maintenance on the resort. During this time, we also treat our staff to a day of relaxation and friendly competition. We call it our All Staff Outing.
This year the theme was Family Feud. We organized the staff into teams which mixed up the departments. This gave everyone a chance to compete alongside team members they don’t typically get to work with, for example, the housekeeping and kitchen teams.
I wrote an email to about 200 guests, asking them questions about Belize, Beaches and Dreams, and their experience here. I grouped the the answers into the top 5 or 6 for each question and got to work cutting, folding and hot-glueing a home-made family feud game.
Our venue was King Lewey’s Island which is a hour’s boat ride from Beaches and Dreams. We took three boats for our 50 people and it was a perfect start to our day. We had sun and hardly any wind, so the boat ride was smooth and fast. King Lewey’s staff greeted us with welcome drinks and big smiles.
We got started on the game right away. We had a lot of questions to get through. With 8 teams, we played 4 games in the first round. Each game had 3 questions and the teams with the most points advanced to the next round. We played two games in the second round. And finally, the 2 best teams played one game in the final round. Here are some of the most fun questions/answers
Q: What was your favorite drink while at Beaches and Dream? (Ben was so happy to see his name in the answers!)
- Pina / Banana Colada
- Ben’s drink / Any drink from Ben
- Beer / Belikin
- Mojito
- Lime in a Coconut
Q: I would have enjoyed Belize even more, if I had the super power of _____________
- Deflecting / Killing / Invisible to Bugs
- Flying
- More time / Freezing time / Time travel
- Being in two places / teleportation
- Aquaman / Breathing underwater
- Unlimited money
Q: If I lived in Belize instead of my home country, I would no longer ______ on a regular basis
- Work / Check email
- Be stressed
- Dress up / wear pants / wear warm clothes
- Shovel Snow / Freeze
- Commute / Drive
- Binge Netflix / TV / Be on Phone
Everyone had a great time. It was definitely harder than it looks on TV, to come up with answers! Afterwards, we had an amazing lunch from King Lewey’s and relaxed for a couple hours before heading home.
After our staff outing this year, the whole team gets a week away from the resort, and we re-open Sept 28th to greet the new season! It will still be slow for a while, but it will be nice to ease into the the high season and holiday season.