Organising a seminar at a château means offering your teams something other than a windowless hotel room. In the countryside, away from distractions, in a place you book entirely for your group: the setting changes the way people work together. At the Château de la Huberdière, in Touraine near Amboise, your company has a fourteen-hectare estate reserved for it alone, 2 hrs 20 from Paris. I look after the welcome, and what I see from one seminar to the next is that the place does half the work.
This guide brings together what you need to know before booking a residential corporate seminar: capacities, workspaces, accommodation, catering and team-building activities.
Why choose a seminar at a château?
A seminar at a château works on the two things that make it a success: the quality of the work produced and the team spirit that comes out of it. The change of scene lifts teams out of the office routine. Private hire creates a sense of being among yourselves that encourages open speech. And the grounds all around slow the pace just enough for ideas to flow. At break time, people go out and walk in the grounds instead of staring at their phone in a corridor.
La Huberdière is not a standardised seminar centre. It is a lived-in sixteenth-century family home, where your teams are welcomed as guests. We do not run one group after another on the same day: when your company comes, it has the house to itself. That difference is felt from the moment you arrive, and it changes the tone of a working day.
Which workspaces for which format?
The château offers the Orangery and four flexible lounges, for plenaries of up to 100 people as well as small workshops. You don't work the same way with twenty in a plenary and five in a workshop, and the estate lets you move from one to the other without changing venue.
- The Orangery, 200 sq m bathed in light through large bay windows, for plenaries and large-group workshops
- Four more intimate lounges for breakout groups, interviews or quiet moments apart
- The grounds and the terrace for open-air sessions, when the season allows
The technical logistics follow. Each seminar room comes with a video projector, a flip chart, paper and pens; sound system, wifi and screens round out the setup to your needs. You arrive with your programme, I set up the rooms, in a U-shape for a management committee, in islands for workshop sessions, in a circle for a discussion. One thing organisers appreciate: switching from one layout to another during the day takes nothing more than a word over coffee.
Can you house and feed your teams on site?
Housing and feeding your teams on site is the decisive advantage of the residential seminar: no one leaves in the evening. Conversations carry on over dinner, team spirit is built outside the meetings, often better than in the meeting room. The château houses up to 20 team members in 10 rooms, each with a private bathroom, each with its own name and character rather than a door number.
At the table, the cooking is homemade. Lodovica, Italian by birth, puts together meals from market and kitchen-garden produce, and caters to everyone's dietary needs without anyone having to mention it three times. Accommodation is in single occupancy or in twin rooms with separate beds, depending on the make-up of the group.
Three packages frame the rates. The study day, with an equipped room, two coffee breaks and a buffet lunch, starts at 70 € excl. VAT per person. The residential seminar on half board, which adds the overnight stay in single occupancy and breakfast, starts at 250 € excl. VAT. Full board, served dinner included (starter, main, cheese, dessert), starts at 290 € excl. VAT. I then draw up a precise quote based on the length, the number of participants and the activities chosen. Nothing is billed as a blind package: you see what you pay for, line by line.
Alternating work sessions and real breaks
A good seminar makes as much room for breathing as for meetings, otherwise attention drops off after lunch. The estate lends itself to this without your having to organise anything. Between two sessions, a 16-metre lap pool heated from April to October waits at the edge of the grounds, with its pool house. Some swim a few lengths, others prefer a game of pétanque or table tennis, others still a yoga session that we arrange on request, or a massage by appointment. These breaks are not wasted time: they put the group back in a state to think. Over two days, this is what separates a team still fresh on the second morning from one already worn down.
What does a two-day residential seminar look like?
A two-day residential seminar at la Huberdière follows a simple thread: you arrive, you work, you come together, you leave with decisions made. Here is the run of the day I see come up most often, to be adjusted to your programme.
On the first day, the teams arrive in the late morning. Just enough time to drop off the bags and have a welcome coffee, and the plenary starts in the Orangery. A working lunch around 1 pm, served on site, then breakout groups in the lounges in the afternoon. At the end of the day, a moment of team building outdoors: canoeing, a walk in the grounds or a cookery workshop, depending on the season and the mood. Dinner runs late, with no eye on the clock, and that is often where the real conversations take shape. Everyone then heads to their room, on site.
On the second day, breakfast then a wrap-up session in the morning, with a clear head. You settle the topics left open the day before, you share out the actions to take with an owner and a deadline for each, and the group leaves after lunch. Two days are enough to move a heavy file forward, precisely because no one goes home in between.
Team building at the château and in Touraine
Team building at the château plays out as much outdoors as in a meeting room, and Touraine is not short of chances to bring a team together. We book these activities with our local partners, so you have a single point of contact.
- An Italian cookery class with Lodovica, to prepare and share together
- A hot-air balloon flight at sunrise, taking off from the estate
- A canoe trip down the Cher, or a bike ride on the Loire à Vélo route
- A tasting in the cellars of Vouvray and Montlouis-sur-Loire
- A château visit, from Amboise and Clos Lucé to Chenonceau
These informal moments are often worth as much as the working sessions. I have seen a meeting stuck in the morning come unstuck in the afternoon, simply because two departments had paddled the same canoe in between. That is where colleagues stop being job titles and become people again.
A corporate seminar 2 hrs 20 from Paris
A corporate seminar at la Huberdière takes place 2 hrs 20 from Paris, which makes it an easy-to-reach base for a seminar in Touraine. Allow about 2 hrs 20 by road from Paris, or one hour by TGV to Saint-Pierre-des-Corps then thirty minutes by car, 30 minutes from Tours. Far enough for a change of scene, close enough to come without losing a day of travel at each end.
To discover the packages, the spaces and the capacities in detail, head to the seminar at the château page. And if your teams extend their stay, our guide to visiting the Loire Valley châteaux will help them make the most of the region.
Tell us your dates, the size of the group and the spirit of the seminar: I will send you a tailored proposal within 24 hours.
