You're not including airfare, food, and meeting space. It might not quite reach $2k but pretty close.

But that's likely still cheaper than office space. That ranges anywhere from $20-$70+ per square foot depending on city and how nice it is. So even a tiny desk space is 500-2k a month.

Still, you guys assume this would be within the US, only. Excuse me for saying that, but that's some typical, US-centric kind of thinking. There's really whole world out there. If you're going to go for 2 weeks, go to Asia, South America or Central/South Europe and pay a third of the costs. Heck, do you know how cheap country side airbnbs in Portugal or Italy are? THAT'S how you build lasting memories.

Time becomes expensive then too… Jet lag is also a substantial issue. You have to accommodate the lowest common denominator in these situations. (People who have substantial family, don’t do well with jet lag, and aren’t very fond of long flights in economy)

Personally, 2 weeks is the minimum in my book for any kind of substantial time difference (4+ hours) and substantial flight time (8+ hours each way). I’m sure others feel even more aggressively than I do. I cannot imagine how people with kids would feel. The food and bacteria issues also just make things really challenging for many people.

There’s also the issue that you’re usually there for work, not just fun. Thus, you don’t really get to enjoy the spectacles as much because you’re gonna be doing 40+ hours working. I’ve been in exotic destinations before and had work stuff come up. It is not fun anymore. Terrible if anything. Rather be home than be in amazing place but unable to enjoy it.

You make some good points. Time difference is definitely a factor, but the thing is that with people WFH, you presumable are already dealing with people working in different timezones. So you organize those trips to always be somewhat within +-4h of the most of your employees. And those who can't join, will join into another destination. It would surely be one of those things you'd have to have a team dedicated to organize. But that's a team that would replace a bunch of existing, office-specific operational positions.

Food and bacteria – well, that's true. Although not everyone is affected and these come mostly from poor hygiene of either cooks/staff or the employees themselves. You make sure you choose a trusted and tested locations and educate your employees over tap water usage. I guess not much more can be done.

> There’s also the issue that you’re usually there for work, not just fun.

I think it's a matter of the vision. I absolutely would have made it to be more fun than work. First of all, in my example those would be frequent, so there would be less or no FOMO and not everyone would go to each of them. Which means you could definitely delegate the line support to those absent. If you ended up getting called in for help after all, that's just life. But, that's also unlikely to happen each time you getaway.

> you’re gonna be doing 40+ hours working

Well, no. I understand it may have been like this in your case, but it shouldn't be. I see those getaways more as a concentrated leisure/team-building activities you otherwise do throughout the year in the office and still get paid for. Except here you have an added benefit of actually being able to hold some really cool, out of the "cubicle-box" brainstormings/hackatons. Plus all the team building games, parties, etc. – again, all those things you'd normally do in the office to actually bond with people.

My $8k figure was based on 4 company get togethers per year ($2k * 4).

$2k for one week of travel expenses was based on 5 nights of hotel at $150/night ($750), 5 days of rental car at $200, gas for the car at $40, roundtrip flight at $500, travel to/from home airport at $60, parking at home airport at $50, and 6 days of meals @ $55/day ($330). Grand total $1930 plus taxes and tips.

When my company rented out the convention space in the Hard Rock Hotel plus rooms for 50-100ish employees, the room rates were still $150+/night. Granted that was the same week as CES, but I don't think hotel costs scale down that much unless one is willing to sacrifice ___location or something else.

The other things should be scalable a bit with tradeoffs. That said, I wouldn't be too keen on going on a week long work trip where I can't leave the hotel, must eat every meal at the hotel with my colleagues, and don't have any way to get around. To me, that means a successful event would have to budget for people expensing at least some of their own meals and for people expensing at least a few taxis/ubers.

Again, my experience with big company gatherings is tied to CES which is its own beast, but in the case of CES my company pretty much left everyone up to their own devices in terms of getting to/from the hotel and for most meals. Hotel rooms were also individually expensed (but out of a reserved block of rooms). My company was obsessive about expenses and the cost of CES, so I imagine if there were a cheaper way to do it, we would have been doing it that way instead.

The thing is I did not even think of doing that in the US, one of the most expensive of places. And even if in the US, you don't have to go to another city. No, quite the contrary. Some wilderness. Alaska, maybe? Montana? And that's not for the whole company at the same time, but for individual teams. You want some sightseeing? Sure, how about Puerto Rico? Or abroad, like Mexico, or South America? The options are limitless. Assuming people WFH anyway, it doesn't have to be "close" to anywhere in particular.