Event Recap: Winter Wonderland Resort Style
You think you do holidays to the extreme? Bet you never used over 300,000 ornaments! You know holiday prep in the RGI atelier starts before summer even begins. Our various retail mixed use, corporate, and resort clients begin the planning process for holiday overhauls many months in advance to make sure to capitalize on this revenue and revelry driven season. Here at RGI, we tend to have a no task is too big mentality. Let us tell you- sometimes we take this very literally. 60 feet of Christmas Tree in a resort lobby big! We love new challenges and letting our creativity expand, so when we were asked to transform a 4 diamond resort in Loudon County Virginia into a Winter Wonderland we let our minds run wild.
Our brief: to transform the resort into a holiday atmosphere that would attract both out of town holiday guests and entice locals to come and join in on the activities. This involved our team creating multiple visually stunning focal points in the hotel, as well as creating engaging programing from Thanksgiving through Christmas that entertained all age groups and guests! RGI worked to make it a destination that not only looked visually stunning and to increase their overall holiday rooms revenue, food and beverage revenue, but we wanted to establish this location as a source of activity and engagement for the local community.
What does this end up looking like? Let’s just say it wasn’t all two turtle doves and partridge in a pear tree.
A 6 day build in the freezing cold and rain
64 trees including a 60ft sequoia with over 40,000 ornaments
263 wreaths
600 individual bows
6,101 snowflakes
100,000ft of garland
250,000 ft of tree lights
AND…
Yes we weren’t kidding, over 300,000 ornaments. 200+ in every tree, 1000s to get every wreath decorated, and then think of all the shinny spheres we needed to get every foot of garland adorned! It doesn’t stop there. RGI included an out of this world instillation dreamt up by our genius Commander in Chic Rachael Glaws. 8,000 ornaments suspended from the ceiling by a fishing wire grid, made them look like they were floating in air-think Harry Potter and the floating candles in the great hall...Yeah, I know AMAZING!
I mean go big or go home, am I right?
We know that every holiday project is unique, RGI wants to be driven by the strengths and goals of the particular location and client while creating a festive holiday atmosphere.
While this client has champagne taste, everyone's on a budget at the end of the day. With over 60,000 square feet to be transformed, the RGI team had to strategically approach the project to make sure that we were still making everything cohesive and intentionally filled while adhering to a very strict budget.
In order to do that, our design revolved around creating intentional larger than life moments in high traffic areas for instance making an impactful impression upon guests when they first arrived. Focusing on registration, the main elevator bank, the principle restaurant, and other places that we knew attendees would be walking through return to again and again and had to walk through on the way to programming, while we filled in the gaps with a take on seasonal decor elements.
It’s greatly important to us as a company, for our Principle Rachael, and for the type of clients that we work with that everything serves a purpose it's not just there to be there. This is why we focus so much on the larger than life moments that truly made an impact.
Here are some of those Larger Than Life Moments:
Of course our 60ft stunner with a full tree lighting celebration
A snowflake insulation in the registration area with the resort logo that made guests feel immersed in the snow while checking in
By the elevators, those thousands upon thousands of ornaments hung from a methodically designed with a fishing wire grid instillation
For a little nod to resort and recreational life- a custom golf cart strung-up with tree lights
In the restaurant, giant replicas of ornaments and 5ft snowflakes amazed guests as they dinned
It doesn’t stop there, RGI also was tasked with creating over 6 weeks of holiday programing for the resort. This brought over 400 guests a day for 12 hours of holiday fun everyday! Multiple activations were thoughtfully curated for the guests to enjoy.
Continuing with our mission to try and always source locally, RGI created a Holiday Pop-up Market and brought in various local vendors and seasonal food and beverage options. The Loudon County area is known to some as the “Napa of the East Coast” so of course we had to incorporate local vineyards too! We hunted out artisans and small batch providers knowing that we were not only supporting the local community, but that this would make the activities even more enticing for locals to attend and see what they could discover in their own backyard! It was a win win!
No one ever got bored, with activations to keep everyone entertained. A mini-polar express, petting zoo with all the northern creatures you could think of (yes, we heard Rudolph even made an appearance), as well as children’s activities like cookie making and ornament decorating classes. Santa also came to say hi and take pictures of course!
