Every organiser knows the moment. The date is agreed, the budget is signed off, and then someone asks how the colleagues from the Zurich office are supposed to get home afterwards.
The company Christmas party is the one evening of the year when the whole team is in the same room, and it is also the one evening when logistics quietly decide whether people stay until midnight or slip away after dessert. Neuchâtel solves more of that problem than most people expect: a lakeside setting, direct rail connections from three corners of the country, and rooms upstairs for anyone who would rather not travel back the same night. The events team at Hôtel Beaulac has been running these evenings for three decades and can be reached at sales@beaulac.ch or on +41 32 723 11 11.
Getting a scattered team into the same room
If your colleagues are spread across several sites, the venue you choose is really a travel decision. Neuchâtel sits on the rail network in a way that works in your favour. Bern and Biel are under an hour away. Zurich is roughly an hour and a half by direct IC5 service. Geneva Airport has a station inside the terminal, with trains reaching Neuchâtel in around an hour and a half, and Zurich Airport is about two hours out. For anyone flying in for the occasion, that is a single train and no changes to think about.
The second advantage is linguistic. Neuchâtel sits on the language border, which makes it neutral ground for a company running sites in both the German and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. Neither team feels it has travelled to the other’s territory, and international colleagues find a city where English is entirely unremarkable in a hotel setting.
The third is more practical than it sounds. When the venue also has bedrooms, the question of the last train stops governing the evening. Guests who stay overnight in the canton receive the Neuchâtel Tourist Card, which covers public transport across the canton, funiculars included. It is a small thing that removes a large amount of admin from your inbox.
Book earlier than you think you need to
The usable window is short. It runs from the last week of November to around 20 December, which is three and a half weeks in which every company in the region is chasing the same thing. Fridays go first, Thursdays shortly after.
If you are planning in September, you are comfortably placed. If you start at the end of October, you will be choosing from what is left. The most seasoned organisers block their date in spring, immediately after settling the previous year’s invoices.
Two pieces of advice are worth more than they appear. First, look at a Tuesday or Wednesday. Availability is considerably better, terms are more favourable, and your colleagues are not forced to choose between the office Christmas party and their own family commitments, which stack up alarmingly on December Fridays. Second, the event does not have to happen in December at all. An end-of-year party held in January, framed as a launch rather than a review, costs less, brings more people to the table and can be prepared without anyone losing sleep. Very few companies think of it, which is precisely why it works.
Sit-down dinner or drinks and canapés?
A successful evening is not a good meal served to colleagues. It is a format that matches the year the team has just had.
The sit-down dinner remains the right choice for teams of up to around a hundred, when the evening needs a shape, a speech and a proper thank you. It gives the night a structure and it lets you plan a seating arrangement, which is no small matter in a company where several departments rarely cross paths.
A standing reception with canapés works better above that size, or when teams come from different sites and the real objective is to get people mixing. Guests move, circulate and talk to colleagues they would not otherwise meet. Do allow seating for roughly a third of the room, or the evening will end earlier than planned.
The format that gets the most out of the day combines both: a workshop or annual review in the late afternoon, drinks, then dinner. It justifies the journey for anyone travelling in and turns a meal into a genuine team day. Hôtel Beaulac runs this combination as a single package, alongside its conference and seminar services.
Seven private rooms at the water's edge
Hôtel Beaulac has seven fully private rooms accommodating between 5 and 300 guests. The Léopold-Robert room offers 226 square metres with large windows facing the lake and takes the largest banquets. The Le Corbusier room, at 54 square metres, suits groups of up to 60. The Maximilien-de-Meuron room is modular and can be extended by opening it into the adjoining spaces. All are fitted with audiovisual equipment, air conditioning and sound insulation, with a technical team on site.
What makes the difference on the night tends to be smaller than the floor plan: drinks at Waves, the rooftop bar on the seventh floor, with the lake and the Alps in front of you; a banqueting kitchen that produces everything in house; bedrooms one lift ride away; and a single point of contact who handles the file from the first enquiry to the end of the evening.
If you want to lift the evening further, hold the drinks at the Christmas market, traditionally set up in the Jardin anglais near the lakefront, and come to the table afterwards. Check the dates of the current edition before fixing your timings.
Book your end-of-year evening at Hôtel Beaulac by writing to sales@beaulac.ch or calling +41 32 723 11 11, and give your team the December they will still be talking about in January. The rooms and packages are set out at https://beaulac.ch/conferences-et-banquets-hotel-beaulac/
