A 30 person office could not house the people attending, so you’d need to add costs of a hotel/AirBnB/renting nearby houses if going down that option. Even taking into account that commercial rest estate is usually more expensive than residential, I’d expect the attendee accommodation cost to be greater than the office rental simply because people need more living space than they do conference space.
Additionally in my experience retreats tend to go much better if everyone is on-site in one location: it encourages more spontaneous interaction outside of the scheduled time. There are also benefits to being outside a city center (too easy for people to get distracted and wander off otherwise).
Was Wytham a wise investment? I’m not sure, I’d love to see a calculation on it, and it probably comes down to things like the eventual utilization rate. But I think a fairer reference class would be “renting a conference center plus hotel” than “renting a 30-person office”.
I agree with Adam here about the fact that it’s better to host all attendees in one place during retreats.
However, I am not sure of the number of bedrooms that Wytham has. It could be that a lot of attendees have to rent bedrooms outside of Wytham anyways, which makes the deal worse.
A 30 person office could not house the people attending, so you’d need to add costs of a hotel/AirBnB/renting nearby houses if going down that option. Even taking into account that commercial rest estate is usually more expensive than residential, I’d expect the attendee accommodation cost to be greater than the office rental simply because people need more living space than they do conference space.
Additionally in my experience retreats tend to go much better if everyone is on-site in one location: it encourages more spontaneous interaction outside of the scheduled time. There are also benefits to being outside a city center (too easy for people to get distracted and wander off otherwise).
Was Wytham a wise investment? I’m not sure, I’d love to see a calculation on it, and it probably comes down to things like the eventual utilization rate. But I think a fairer reference class would be “renting a conference center plus hotel” than “renting a 30-person office”.
I agree with Adam here about the fact that it’s better to host all attendees in one place during retreats.
However, I am not sure of the number of bedrooms that Wytham has. It could be that a lot of attendees have to rent bedrooms outside of Wytham anyways, which makes the deal worse.