Corporate Retreats

A corporate retreat on Vancouver Island that earns the flight.

Exclusive lakefront property, 45 minutes from YYJ. No shared lobbies, no hotel hallways, no other guests. Your team and the lake.

Four colleagues posing on the dock at golden hour, lake stretching behind them
01 — Why Vancouver Island

Why teams fly out here for offsites.

Most corporate retreats on Vancouver Island happen at resort hotels. Your team books a conference room, shares the lobby with vacationers, and scatters to separate floors at night. The offsite feels like a workday with better views.

Shawnigan Retreats is different by design. We rent the entire property to one group at a time. Two houses on two private acres of lakefront, sleeping up to 18 people across eight bedrooms. Your team eats together, works together, and walks from the boardroom to the dock without passing another soul.

We built this place to work from. The WiFi runs at 300 Mbps over fibre because we use it ourselves. The 85-inch screen in the great room has HDMI and AirPlay because we got tired of dongles. The dining table seats twelve because that is the size of a team that can still make decisions in one room.

The entire 2-acre private property from above
02 — 45 minutes from YYJ

Getting here from YYJ, Vancouver, and Seattle.

From Victoria International Airport (YYJ). The airport sits in Sidney on the Saanich Peninsula. Take Highway 17 south to Highway 1, then north toward Duncan. Exit at Shawnigan Lake Road. The drive is 45 minutes, entirely on paved highway. No secondary ferries, no gravel roads. Teams with an early-morning landing can be in a working session before lunch.

From Vancouver. Drive to Tsawwassen and take the BC Ferries sailing to Swartz Bay (90 minutes). From Swartz Bay, follow Highway 17 south to Highway 1 north. Total door-to-door time is roughly two and a half hours including the ferry crossing. For teams flying into YVR, the Tsawwassen terminal is 30 minutes from the airport.

From Seattle. Teams from Seattle can fly direct to YYJ (a 45-minute hop on Alaska Airlines or Harbour Air seaplanes) or drive to Anacortes and take the Washington State Ferry to Sidney. The ferry route adds scenery and avoids the border crossing at Peace Arch.

Ground transport on arrival. A 14-passenger Sprinter through Wilson's Group meets flights at YYJ. We arrange the booking; you just tell Brianna the flight number. For smaller groups, the drive from the airport is straightforward enough that a rental car works well.

The route crosses the Malahat, where Highway 1 climbs the coastal range above the Saanich Inlet. On a clear day the views stretch across the water to the Gulf Islands. In winter the summit occasionally sees snow, but the highway is plowed and salted within hours.

03 — Vs. the alternatives

Vs. Tigh-Na-Mara, Brentwood Bay, Painter's Lodge, and Bear Mountain.

Vancouver Island has a handful of venues that host corporate retreats. Each comes with trade-offs worth understanding before you book.

Tigh-Na-Mara Seaside Spa Resort

A 22-acre resort in Parksville, about two hours north of YYJ. Full-service resort with conference rooms, a spa, and oceanfront cabins. Facilities are professional and staff handles large groups well. The trade-off: you share the property with other hotel guests, conference rooms are shared facilities, and the two-hour drive from YYJ burns half a travel day.

Brentwood Bay Resort and Spa

A boutique hotel on the Saanich Inlet, about 30 minutes from downtown Victoria. Oceanfront rooms, a marina, a small meeting room. Convenient location, attractive property. The constraint is scale: it's a hotel, so your team sleeps on separate floors, shares the dining room with other guests, and rents meeting space by the hour.

Painter's Lodge

A fishing-resort hotel in Campbell River, about 2.5 hours north of YYJ. Strong on guided fishing charters and on-water programming. Standard hotel rooms across multiple buildings; meeting rooms shared with other corporate groups. The distance from YYJ is the biggest constraint: most teams lose the whole arrival day.

Westin Bear Mountain

A golf resort on the outskirts of Langford, 20 minutes from downtown Victoria. Conference facilities, a golf course, standard hotel rooms. It feels like a conference hotel because it is one. The advantage is capacity; the disadvantage is that your offsite will feel like every other hotel offsite your team has attended.

Shawnigan Retreats is the opposite model. You rent the entire property. No other guests, no shared conference rooms, no hotel hallways. Twelve people sleep in one house. The boardroom is the dining table. The breakout space is the dock. The meeting ends when someone suggests the sauna, not when the room booking expires. For teams of eight to eighteen who want three or four uninterrupted days together, this format produces different conversations than a hotel does.

The honest limitation: we do not have a front desk, a concierge, or room service. We have a house, a lake, and Brianna's phone number. If your team wants turndown service, book Brentwood Bay. If your team wants to argue about strategy until midnight and then jump in the lake, book us.

For a wider scan, see our roundup of the best corporate retreat venues near Victoria, BC — six options compared, with the trade-offs spelled out.

A team gathered around the long dining table on the deck at sunset, lake in the background
04 — A four-day agenda that works

Sample executive offsite, Monday through Thursday.

The schedule we have watched work for leadership teams of eight to fourteen running annual planning or quarterly strategy. Adjust freely; the agenda is yours.

Day 1 — Monday: Arrival and context-setting

  • 9:00amTeam lands at YYJ. Sprinter meets the flight curbside.
  • 10:15amArrive at the property. Coffee in the great room, room assignments, twenty-minute walk around the grounds.
  • 11:00amKickoff session. Set the week's outcomes on the whiteboard. Hard stop at 12:30.
  • 12:30pmWorking lunch on the deck. Chef-prepared, served family style.
  • 2:00pmContext dump. Each team lead presents a ten-minute state-of-the-world. No slides, just the whiteboard. Two hours with breaks.
  • 4:30pmFree time. Sauna heats up in 40 minutes from cold. The dock faces west and catches the afternoon light.
  • 7:00pmWelcome dinner. No work talk. Halibut from Cowichan Bay or duck from a Cowichan Valley farm, depending on the season.
  • 9:00pmFirepit on the beach. Optional. Some teams stay until midnight.

Day 2 — Tuesday: Strategy and hard decisions

  • 7:00amCoffee on the dock. Yoga on the deck if you have booked the Cobble Hill instructor (two days notice).
  • 9:00amStrategy session in the great room. Full team around the dining table. 85-inch screen for data, whiteboards for frameworks. Three hours, two short breaks.
  • 12:00pmLunch. Walk afterward. The lake trail is flat and takes twenty minutes.
  • 1:30pmBreakouts in two or three groups. Cottage living room, games room, and the master suite balcony each hold four to six people comfortably.
  • 4:00pmTeam activity: pickleball bracket, paddleboard relay, or a winery run to Unsworth or Blue Grouse (both under fifteen minutes by car).
  • 6:30pmWorking dinner. One prompt on the table: where do we want this company in three years.
  • 9:00pmHot tub seats six. Or sleep. Both are valid.

Day 3 — Wednesday: Decisions and ownership

  • 8:00amBreakfast on the deck.
  • 9:00amDecisions session. What did we agree on yesterday, who owns each commitment, and what is the timeline. Two hours, hard stop.
  • 11:00amDeep-work block. Pairs and small groups draft the plans that came out of the morning session. No scheduled meetings until dinner.
  • 2:00pmOptional: hike the Kinsol Trestle (15 minutes south, 90-minute round trip), swim in the lake (24°C in late August), or catch up on email using the 300 Mbps fibre.
  • 5:00pmSauna and dock. This is the session where people say the things they did not say in the meeting room.
  • 7:00pmFinal group dinner. Chef cooks the best of whatever is local this week.

Day 4 — Thursday: Wrap and depart

  • 8:00amBreakfast.
  • 9:00amWrap-up session. Review the commitments board. Assign follow-up dates. Photograph the whiteboards. One hour.
  • 10:00amPack, walk-through, group photo on the dock.
  • 10:30amSprinter departs for YYJ. Early-afternoon flights home.

What not to schedule: meetings before 9am (people travel tired); parallel tracks with more than twelve people (you stop being one team); fewer than two unscheduled hours per day (resentment builds). Leave slack in the agenda. The best conversations happen in the slack.

The great room with the dining table that doubles as the boardroom, lake-facing
05 — Built to work from

Technology and meeting infrastructure.

We built this property to work from, so the infrastructure is not an afterthought. Here is what your team gets without asking.

Internet. 300 Mbps fibre WiFi across the entire property. We tested it with eight simultaneous video calls running from different rooms. It held. There is a backup 5G hotspot in the kitchen drawer if your CFO wants to see a redundancy plan in the proposal.

Presentation. An 85-inch screen in the great room with HDMI and AirPlay. Plug in or cast wirelessly. We keep a USB-C-to-HDMI adapter in the TV cabinet because someone always forgets theirs.

Meeting spaces. The dining table seats twelve in boardroom configuration. The great room holds sixteen in theater seating. The games room, cottage living room, and master suite balcony each work as breakout rooms for four to six people. Whiteboards and markers are in the closet by the front door. A flip-chart easel is behind the coats.

Video conferencing. A conference camera and a Yeti microphone are available for hybrid sessions. Brianna sets them up before your arrival if you need them. Cell signal is strong across the property, reliable enough for calls from the deck or the dock.

Quiet zones. Individual calls work well from the master suite balcony (lake view, door closes), the lake bedroom (ground floor, quiet), and the cottage living room (separate building entirely). Nobody has to take a call from their car.

Group serving themselves at a chef-prepared buffet outdoors with the lake behind them
06 — Pricing and the CFO math

What it costs, and what the alternative costs.

Lakeside House only (sleeps 14, 6 bedrooms): from $4,500/night plus $450 cleaning fee. Three-night minimum.

Whole property (sleeps 18, 8 bedrooms): from $5,500/night plus $650 cleaning fee. Three-night minimum.

Catering, facilitation, and activities are priced separately. A private chef runs roughly $900/day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for twelve. Facilitators, yoga instructors, and guided activities are arranged through our network and invoiced directly.

The math your CFO will ask about.

Downtown Victoria, 3 nights

Twelve rooms at the Fairmont Empress or Magnolia run $400–$500/night in shoulder season ($14,400–$18,000), plus a private meeting room at $1,200/day ($3,600), plus catered breakfast and lunch at $90/person/day ($3,240). Before dinners: $21,000–$25,000. Dinners out for twelve add another $3,000–$5,000. Team scatters to separate floors every night.

Downtown Vancouver, 3 nights

Rooms at the Fairmont Pacific Rim run $450–$650/night ($16,200–$23,400), meeting rooms $1,500/day ($4,500), catering $100/person/day ($3,600). Subtotal: $24,300–$31,500, plus flights for any team members outside Vancouver. Same hotel-hallway problem.

Shawnigan Retreats, 3 nights

Whole property at $5,500/night ($16,500) plus $650 cleaning, plus a private chef at $900/day ($2,700). Total: approximately $19,850 all-in. The team sleeps in one house. The boardroom is the dining table. The breakout space is the dock. You get an extra working day because nobody commutes.

50% deposit confirms the booking. Balance due 30 days before arrival. Fully refundable up to 30 days out; cancellations inside 30 days are non-refundable. We invoice however your finance team prefers. GST receipts provided.

Request a corporate proposal
Team celebrating together at the lakefront with the dock and sunset behind them
07 — Between the sessions

What your team does in the slack hours.

The property sits on two acres of lakefront with enough to fill downtime without leaving. Nothing is mandatory. Almost everything happens anyway.

On the water. Two paddleboards and two kayaks are included. The lake is swimmable from late June through September, reaching 24°C by late August. Wakesurfing and e-foiling are available through a local charter from June to September. The dock is sixty feet long and faces west — sunset from the water every evening.

The Finnish sauna, twelve paces from the lake door

On the property. A regulation pickleball court with paddles and balls in the bin. A Finnish sauna that seats six and reaches 90°C in forty minutes. A six-person hot tub. A gym with treadmill, rower, and dumbbells to fifty pounds. Gas firepits lakeside with Adirondack chairs.

Nearby. The Kinsol Trestle is a fifteen-minute drive south and the hike takes ninety minutes round trip. Mt. Baldy is twenty minutes and rewards with a view of the whole lake. Cowichan Valley wineries (Unsworth, Blue Grouse, Merridale, Averill Creek) are all within a thirty-minute drive. Duncan is fifteen minutes north for supplies.

After dark. The home theater seats eight with a projector and surround sound. Ping-pong table in the games room. Board games (Catan, Codenames) and three decks of cards in the cabinet. The firepit on the beach runs on gas and lights with a switch.

Group in savasana on yoga mats spread across the dock
08 — Optional add-ons

Whatever else you want, Brianna will line up.

Tell Brianna what you want and she will line it up. Everything below is arranged through our local network and invoiced separately.

Private chef

Victoria-based chefs cook out of our kitchen. Local ingredients: Cowichan Bay halibut in summer, duck and root vegetables in winter. Roughly $900/day for three meals for twelve.

Strategy facilitators

Two facilitators we have used a dozen times each. Both specialize in leadership offsite design and strategy sessions. References available.

Yoga and breathwork

Instructors from Cobble Hill, two days notice. Morning sessions on the deck overlooking the lake. Mats provided.

Winery transport

Afternoon wine tour to Unsworth, Blue Grouse, Merridale, or Averill Creek. All under thirty minutes. Driver arranged.

Water sports

Wakesurfing, waterskiing, and e-foiling through a local charter. Two e-foil boards on site. Most beginners ride by hour two.

Guided hikes

For Mt. Baldy, Kinsol Trestle, or longer Cowichan Valley routes. Half-day or full-day options.

Three colleagues at sunset by the lake, end of the workday
09 — Who books here

Teams of eight to sixteen, mostly from Victoria, Vancouver, and Seattle.

Most of our corporate guests come from Victoria, Vancouver, and Seattle. The common thread is teams of eight to sixteen people who have tried the hotel conference room format and found it lacking.

Leadership teams running annual planning. Three or four days, Monday through Thursday. The agenda is strategy sessions in the morning, deep work in the afternoon, and long dinners where the real conversations happen. The three-night minimum exists because one-night offsites do not produce lasting decisions.

Boards of directors. The dining table seats twelve, which is the right size for a board. Privacy is absolute. No other guests on the property, no hotel staff walking through. Confidential conversations stay in the room.

Engineering and product teams. Teams that need to build something together, not just talk about it. 300 Mbps fibre, quiet breakout spaces for pairing, and a property remote enough that nobody drifts back to their regular work. The sauna at five resets the day.

Founder retreats and investor meetings. Small groups of four to eight who want a quiet, private setting for high-stakes conversations. The cottage works as a secondary meeting space when conversations need to be separated.

Group meditation session on the lakefront dock at golden hour
10 — Frequently asked

The questions teams email us before they book.

How far is Shawnigan Retreats from Victoria International Airport (YYJ)?

Forty-five minutes by car, entirely on paved highway. Teams landing at 9am can be in a working session by 10:30am. The route crosses the Malahat summit over the Saanich Inlet, which is one of the better drives on Vancouver Island.

What is the best corporate retreat venue on Vancouver Island for executive teams under 16?

For executive teams of eight to sixteen, Shawnigan Retreats offers exclusive use of a six-bedroom lakeside house with 300 Mbps fibre WiFi, an 85-inch presentation screen, boardroom seating for twelve, sauna, hot tub, pickleball court, and a private 60-foot dock. The property is 45 minutes from YYJ. Pricing starts at $4,500/night with a three-night minimum.

How does Shawnigan Retreats compare to Tigh-Na-Mara and Brentwood Bay for corporate retreats?

Tigh-Na-Mara is a 22-acre resort in Parksville, two hours from YYJ, with shared conference rooms and other guests on property. Brentwood Bay is a boutique hotel near Victoria with meeting rooms but standard hotel hallways and shared facilities. Shawnigan Retreats offers exclusive use of the entire property. No other guests, no shared spaces. Your team has the house, the dock, and the lake to themselves.

What does a corporate retreat at Shawnigan Retreats cost?

Corporate pricing starts at $4,500/night for the Lakeside House (sleeps 14, plus $450 cleaning) or $5,500/night for the whole property (sleeps 18, plus $650 cleaning). Three-night minimum. A private chef adds roughly $900/day for three meals. A typical three-night offsite for twelve runs approximately $19,850 all-in with chef service.

Does the property have reliable WiFi for video calls and presentations?

Yes. The property runs on 300 Mbps fibre internet, fast enough for eight simultaneous video calls from different rooms. A backup 5G hotspot provides redundancy. The great room has an 85-inch screen with HDMI and AirPlay for presentations.

Can we bring a facilitator or run our own agenda?

Both. The property provides whiteboards, an 85-inch screen, and multiple breakout spaces. We can also connect you with two facilitators we have used repeatedly who specialize in strategy offsites and leadership retreats. Most teams bring their own agenda and we handle logistics.

Hold a weekday block

Tell Brianna the headcount and the week you are aiming at. She will come back within four hours with rates, a sample agenda, and a hold for forty-eight hours so you can poll the team.

Request a corporate proposal Call (236) 638-1478