Remote work removed the daily commute and the fixed office requirement. It did not remove the need for trust, relationships, context, and occasional face-to-face time. And so a sprawling industry emerged to sell those things back, temporarily, on purpose.
The global corporate retreat market was worth $31.8 billion in 2024. The market is projected to more than double over the next decade. Companies are holding more retreats than before the pandemic, and the number of companies holding zero retreats has almost disappeared.
This research package structures the documentary findings into reusable datasets covering 12 named companies, 7 business models, 13 retreat-economy categories, 18 office functions, and 10 value propositions.
The core thesis
Remote work did not eliminate the office. It unbundled it.
Coordination stayed digital. Meetings, email, Slack, and project management survived the transition without much loss. What disappeared was harder to name: trust built through shared experience, relationships formed in unplanned moments, context passed through hallway conversations, and the serendipity of being physically near people you work with.
The retreat industry exists because those things still have value. The business model is selling them back, temporarily and intentionally, to teams that gave up permanent proximity.
The six-stage framework
The documentary describes a pattern that remote-first companies increasingly follow:
- Remove the daily obligation. Eliminate the commute, fixed attendance, and routine co-location.
- Retain digital coordination. Keep meetings, email, Slack, and project management.
- Identify missing accidental value. Name what disappeared: trust, relationships, context, serendipity.
- Rebuild selectively. Use temporary gatherings for the valuable functions that require in-person presence.
- Design intentionally. Set goals, environment, facilitation, invitees, and ownership before the retreat begins.
- Return to distributed work. End the gathering and resume remote operations.
Named companies
Twelve companies and organizations are named in the documentary across the retreat and proximity economy:
- Surf Office. Retreat planning company operating in more than 200 destinations.
- BoomPop. Corporate offsite platform that raised tens of millions of dollars to simplify offsite planning.
- Offsite. Platform built for distributed companies to gather in person.
- TeamOut. Retreat planning company.
- Moniker Partners. Retreat planning company.
- Flok. Retreat planning company.
- WorkTripp. Retreat planning company.
- NextRetreat. Retreat planning company.
- WeWork. Flexible office company valued at $47 billion in 2019 before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Sold permanent proximity rather than intentional proximity.
- Remote Year. Remote travel and community company. Shut down.
- Selina. Hospitality and coliving company. Collapsed.
- Hacker Paradise. Remote travel and community company. Merged.
Seven business models selling proximity
The retreat economy is not one market. It includes at least seven distinct business models, each selling a different version of temporary in-person connection:
- Permanent office lease. Traditional commercial landlords selling recurring occupancy.
- Coworking and flexible office. WeWork and similar companies selling flexible but recurring workplace access.
- Corporate retreat planner. Companies like Surf Office, TeamOut, Moniker Partners, Flok, WorkTripp, and NextRetreat selling planning, logistics, destinations, and facilitation support.
- Offsite software and platform. BoomPop and Offsite selling simplified retreat planning and procurement infrastructure.
- Peer group and mastermind. YPO (founded 1950), Vistage (founded 1957), and founder masterminds selling identity-based recurring gatherings.
- Coliving and remote travel community. Remote Year, Selina, and Hacker Paradise selling work-compatible travel combined with social structure.
- Retreat consultant and educator. Advisers selling expertise for launching or improving retreats.
The 18 office functions: what stayed and what got rebuilt
Remote work did not eliminate all office functions equally. Some moved to digital tools without significant loss. Others resisted the transition and became the raw material for the retreat economy.
Functions that stayed digital
- Meetings. Scheduled coordination migrated to video calls.
- Email. Asynchronous communication survived intact.
- Slack. Fast team communication stayed digital.
- Project management. Coordination tools replaced physical dashboards and standups.
Functions rebuilt through retreats
- Trust. Shared experiences create trust that digital channels build slowly.
- Psychological safety. Interviewees connect offsites with more open team communication.
- Relationships. Face-to-face relationships remain valuable even when daily co-location is gone.
- Context. Informal organizational knowledge is harder to recreate in scheduled digital channels.
Functions rebuilt intentionally around the agenda
- Hallway conversations. Temporary gatherings create unstructured time around the formal agenda.
- Shared lunches and dinners. Meals are part of the product.
- Serendipity. Retreats manufacture opportunities for unplanned, useful interaction.
- Brainstorming. Small groups can gather around hard problems more effectively in person.
Functions now unbundled from the office entirely
- Mentorship.
- Friendship.
- Celebration.
- Accountability.
- Learning.
The retreat economy categories
The documentary names 13 categories participating in the broader market for intentional in-person gathering:
- Corporate retreats.
- Team offsites.
- Founder masterminds.
- CEO peer groups.
- Digital nomad communities.
- Coliving companies.
- Writing retreats.
- Creator retreats.
- Leadership retreats.
- AI retreats.
- Wellness retreats.
- Retreat consulting and education.
- Remote entrepreneur communities.
What companies are actually buying
Retreat spending is framed, by both buyers and sellers, as something other than rooms and logistics. The documentary identifies 10 value propositions companies are purchasing:
- Alignment. Bringing people toward shared priorities.
- Trust. Building confidence in colleagues.
- Relationships. Strengthening interpersonal bonds.
- Momentum. Creating concentrated forward movement.
- Psychological safety. Making teams safer to communicate honestly.
- Headspace. Creating a different mental context that distances people from routine.
- Deep exploration. Working through hard problems in small groups.
- Informal context. Creating conversations that happen outside of scheduled meetings.
- Culture. Shaping how a team experiences itself.
- Rest and space. Reducing overwhelm and supporting a return to work with more capacity.
Who was interviewed
The documentary includes attributed clips from 10 named participants plus the documentary creator. All interviews originally sourced from The Remote Work Tribe Podcast.
- Stella Garber. Offsites build trust and psychological safety. Remote does not mean rejecting face time.
- William Chia. Remote versus in-person is a false dichotomy. Effective remote work can still require face-to-face time.
- Meryl Johnston. Remote-first teams can value face-to-face relationships. Retreat organizers should handle logistics while leaders shape goals and culture.
- Jared Kleinert. Offsites can build culture or become a box-checking perk. Gathering design should start with goals, environment, facilitation, and invitees.
- Jesse Schoberg. The value of gathering comes from the extra moments around work and the shift in headspace that a different physical context creates.
- Branca Ballot. Small in-person groups can gather around one difficult customer problem for deeper exploration than digital settings allow.
- Scott Brills. Prospective retreat operators should run the trip first with forgiving participants before selling it to strangers.
- Amar Ghose. Off-topic water-cooler exchanges and team retreats support informal connection that remote work strips away.
- Barrett Brooks. Creating space and rest helps people return to distributed work without feeling overwhelmed.
- John Yarbrough. Remote work created time for walks, cooking, and more intentional self-care.
- Jessica Malnik. Documentary creator. Has worked remotely for more than a decade and interviewed dozens of remote-first founders.
Market scale
The documentary cites a $31.8 billion global corporate retreat market in 2024, projected to more than double over the next decade. Some retreat companies manage hundreds of retreats per year. Some oversee more than $100 million in annual retreat spending. Some retreats cost several thousand dollars per employee.
Named client relationships cited in the documentary include Webflow, Monday.com, Shopify, Google, NASA, Netflix, Amazon, IBM, McKinsey, and Harvard.
Dataset and source files
Source
The documentary transcript is the sole factual source for this research package. Every company, business model, office function, value proposition, and market claim was extracted from the transcript.
