Not every agency boss would pose as Alan Sugar to “fire” his colleagues, fly a band out to a conference hotel or put aside budget for an extensive recce of Tenerife to plan for a Race Across the World-style bonding effort.
But Holiday Lounge boss Paul Moss believes the exciting team-building exercises the Leicestershire agency chain hosts for its 24 staff at its annual conference inspire camaraderie and loyalty, while serving as a thank-you for all their hard work.
Unsurprisingly, this year’s Holiday Lounge conference promises to be bigger and better than ever, but Moss's lips are sealed.
The agency, which has branches in Hinckley, Lutterworth, Birstall and Burbage, and has its sights set on opening in Blaby and Kenilworth this year, is known locally for spoiling its most loyal clients with trips to the races and hospitality evenings at Leicester City Football Club.
And that party spirit extends to its own team, with the company’s annual conference having become a much-anticipated – and budgeted for – fixture in the calendar.
It all started during planning for the TTG Top 50 Travel Agencies 2026 finalist's autumn conference in 2024 when the senior leadership team decided they wanted to do something a bit special, feeling the usual team-building activities in previous years like bowling hadn’t gone down that well, especially with a few sore heads in the room.
So they got their thinking caps on and designed an elaborate Race Across the World-style activity for the 2024 event called Race Across Tenerife.
'Race Across Tenerife'
When Holiday Lounge flew branch staff out to the Hard Rock Hotel in Tenerife, they were unaware what lay in store. Head of operations Zoe Moss and senior travel consultant Jessica Moss, who specialises in marketing and social media, even left golf clubs around the hotel as a decoy.
But once the group got together, they were split into teams and given t-shirts with special logos before setting off on their "Race Across Tenerife" from the "really accommodating" Hotel Vulcano Tenerife, which provided the participants a packed lunch and backpack containing sweat bands and water bottles.
The teams were completed by representatives from conference sponsors, with If Only sponsoring the overall challenge.
Holiday Lounge's Race Across Tenerife conference (photo credit: Holiday Lounge)
The teams were given a fresh clue at each of the five checkpoints they had to reach across the island, with senior staff and sponsors located at each one to register their arrival, take their photo and give them the next clue.
The teams were given just €30 so they “wouldn’t just jump in taxis straight away”, and had to use public transport and speak to locals to make their way around the route. “A lot of them hadn’t actually been to Tenerife before, so it was good for them to see the local area!”, said Jess.
Race Across Tenerife was a hit with the team (Credit: Holiday Lounge)
Zoe added: “Two of the teams were really competitive and they did it really quickly, but the two others went a bit wrong. One gave up! But it was all in good humour. We put a tour operator in with the staff in each team and mixed them all up, which helped build relationships.”
Jess and Zoe had been out to Tenerife on a recce months prior to try out the challenge themselves and make sure it all worked, coming up with the clues and deciding on the checkpoints themselves.
'You’re fired!'
After the success of the 2024 challenge, Zoe and Jess came up with another TV-themed idea for the 2025 conference at the Athena Beach Hotel in Paphos, which helpfully gave the agency a "really good rate" to host the conference there.
The pair and Paul dressed up and impersonated the three Apprentice judges: Alan Sugar (Paul), Karren Brady (Jess) and Tim Campbell (Zoe). “It was really funny,” said Zoe. “We even created a promotional photo with us in our outfits, which was waiting on the screen for the staff when they arrived! We were sitting at a table in front of the screen trying not to laugh.”
The participants were tasked with going out into the local area to find 10 Cypriot items, a classic task from early episodes of The Apprentice. The agency had black cabs lined up outside the hotel for the teams, which each had access to their driver for three hours. The teams were each given €200 to buy the items, with Zoe and Jess again having conducted a dummy run of the challenge on a previous visit.
“A lot of the items they may have never heard of, or wouldn’t have been familiar with at all,” said Jess. “So it was about mixing with the locals and bartering on the pricing – it got into a real debate back in the boardroom just like on the TV show.
“Paul fired someone for being late and we were throwing little comments in which were making them all argue. One of the items was local lace and we had to get one of the Cypriot hotel staff to verify it was genuine, so one of the teams got a penalty for that.
“One team spent €90 on a religious painting, whereas the other team had bought a replica so they were arguing about that. It was just brilliant and they all really enjoyed it.”
Zoe added: “We enjoy planning the conferences and it’s fun because all through the year people are trying to guess the theme. We do a feedback form after each conference to all the staff and suppliers and last year’s feedback was phenomenal.
"It was full of emotion on the last night too because we had a member of staff who was retiring, we had awards and we had a video for Paul as he doesn’t usually get much recognition. We’d flown two girls out to perform Abba on the second night. It was just full of really good things.”
Planning for this year’s conference and challenge is under way, and will ramp up over the summer. But given the success of the first two, the senior team at Holiday Lounge will have a challenge of their own on their hands keeping the details under wraps!
