Team UK & Ireland placed an honourable second at the 2026 Switzerland Meeting Trophy, which was held from June 18th – 21st this year, which saw participants racing across Crans-Montana, Montreux and Geneva. They were narrowly pipped to gold by France and closely followed by Belgium in third place.
The all-female team of seven, competing as “Fondue 007,” took on two days of rally-style competition, with venue visits, team challenges and MICE trivia designed to put the country’s conference and incentive offering through its paces. The group were made up of representatives from nteractive, Reed & Mackay, Principal, Global Events, emc3, Live Group and Amex GBT, and was led by Caroline Pidroni, head of the Swiss Convention Bureau, UK & Ireland.
From Geneva to the mountains
For anyone still sweltering through the London heatwave, here’s some comfort: Switzerland wasn’t much cooler. Yet for some reason, with mountains on one side and a lake on the other, thirty-plus degrees felt a lot more bearable. After arriving into Geneva, it was a direct train straight from the airport up to Crans-Montana, taking just over two hours, before a funicular ride up the final stretch. If you’re used to UK rail travel, it’s absurd how easy it is. It was here the team checked into the Six Senses, an exceptional wellness-led property, with stunning rooms, world-class facilities and meeting spaces to match. Worth saying plainly: it’s an extraordinary hotel, and it set the bar uncomfortably high for everywhere else on the trip. (You can read more about the Six Senses Crans-Montana here!)
The first evening kicked off with welcome drinks at the Beach Club, then dinner at La Ferme de Saint-Amour, where all seven competing nations met for the first time, UK, France, Belgium, the Nordics, the Netherlands, North America and Germany. Official introductions were made, some friendly sizing-up was done, and the scene was set for two days of very competitive racing across some of Switzerland’s finest venues.
The competition began with a cable car up to Cry d’Er, 2,200 metres up, for the first round of challenges. Cheese tasting went well, Alpine golf went less well. Throughout the rally, teams were also fielding rounds of trivia on Switzerland’s MICE partners and destinations, to ensure the teams were picking up as much about Switzerland’s MICE offering as they were points on the board.
After lunch and a hike part of the way back down the mountain, the team picked up cars and drove to Montreux, stopping at the Fairmont Le Montreux Palace for refreshments and a different kind of challenge altogether: formal table-setting, followed by a music round tied to the city’s famous jazz festival heritage. Then it was on to Geneva by train and into Hotel N’vY, ahead of a pool party dinner at Hotel President Geneva, with the unexpected highlight of the night: two resident St Bernard dogs doing the rounds. It was over that dinner that the day-one standings were revealed for the first time; France in first place, Belgium second and the UK in third. Close enough to matter, with one day still to go.
A final-day push to second place
Day two of the competition didn’t let up. The first stop that morning was CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research and one of the world’s most extraordinary conference venues. The challenge took the form of a treasure hunt and quiz around the facility, which, alongside its world-leading scientific credentials, offers a remarkable and unique setting for meetings and events and a slightly surreal backdrop to what was, by that point, a fairly intense inter-nation rivalry.
From there it was on to Domaine de Châteauvieux, a beautiful château set within its own working estate, cooking almost entirely from ingredients grown and reared on site. The team were put through their paces with a series of challenges in the château grounds, including a herb garden identification test, all in the kind of heat that makes everything smell extraordinary and thinking considerably harder.
Back in Geneva, teams split across three different city routes for the final round of challenges. For Team UK, that meant a museum treasure hunt through the Museum of Art and History and a chocolate tasting, rating each sample on its flavour profile, bitterness, sweetness, length, and finish, while moving between locations and taking in just how walkable and well-connected the city is.
The final evening was held at Restaurant Hôtel du Parc des Eaux-Vives, an 18th-century mansion set in parkland above Lake Geneva, with private event spaces accommodating up to 500 guests. A crowd had gathered on the lawn below to watch an open-air opera as the industry dinner played out above them, which, as final-night settings go, would be fairly difficult to top. Then, the moment the last few days had been building towards: the final standings. France took gold, then in arguably the best sporting news to come from England that week, Team UK were announced in second place, with Belgium in third.
What the Switzerland Meeting Trophy is really about
The competitive side is fun, but the real value of the Switzerland Meeting Trophy is what it gives you that a brochure never could: actual time in the venues, hotels and transfers that make or break an event. In two days, Team UK went from a mountaintop resort to a Michelin-starred lunch table to CERN to a lakeside party with dogs in attendance, while experiencing first-hand just how effortlessly Switzerland’s transport network moves you between mountain, city and lake. Few familiarisation trips will give you this much ground covered, this many contacts made — and, if Fondue 007 has anything to say about it — bragging rights to bring home.
Photography: Mattias Nutt