The meal is not the break between the program. It is the program. Most agendas are still designed around content: sessions, speakers, slides. The evidence on what actually builds relationships suggests the opposite priority. Here is how to plan for it.
Start from the Evidence
The longest-running study of adult life, run at Harvard since 1938, found that the quality of close relationships is the strongest predictor of health and happiness across a lifetime. We have written about why bringing people together is the best investment a company can make. This piece takes the next step: if you have the budget and the mandate, how do you spend the days?
A second piece of research is more directly useful to a planner. The World Happiness Report 2025 devoted a chapter to a single, measurable behavior: sharing meals. Drawing on Gallup data from 142 countries, the authors found that how often people eat with others predicts their wellbeing about as strongly as income or employment. People who always share lunch and dinner report roughly one extra point on a ten-point life evaluation scale compared with people who eat alone. That is a large gap, and it holds across ages, cultures, and regions.
For a planner, this is a design principle disguised as a happiness statistic. In one sentence: events build connection when the agenda protects time at the table, because shared meals are one of the strongest measurable predictors of wellbeing.
Less Plenary, More Table
The first decision is proportion. A day built around plenary sessions gives people a shared experience of listening. It does not give them a shared experience of each other. Conversation happens at tables of six to eight, seated, with time. Design backward from that: fix the number of hours the group will spend at tables of that size, then fit the content around it, not the reverse.
Practical moves that work: seated lunches over standing buffets, assigned mixed seating that changes each meal, one long dinner rather than two short ones, and a final morning with no content at all, just breakfast and departures that do not feel rushed.
Protect Time Without Screens
Every program now competes with the phone in each attendee’s pocket. The most effective counter is not a rule but a design. Activities in small groups with a shared task, transfers that mix people rather than sorting them by company or seniority, and a walk between venues instead of a coach all create the conditions for talk. Sessions with no slides, where a local host tells a story, hold attention better than most keynotes.
Let the Destination do the Work
Meetings, incentives, conferences and events happen somewhere, and the somewhere matters. A destination is not a backdrop. Its food, its pace, its hosts and its habits of hospitality are tools for connection that no ballroom can replicate. A market visit with a local guide, a family run restaurant instead of a hotel dining room, a tradition explained by someone who grew up with it: these are the moments people describe years later, and they are the moments in which strangers become colleagues.
This is where a destination management company earns its place. Local knowledge is not a nice to have. It is the difference between a program that could have happened anywhere and one that could only have happened here.
Where Artificial Intelligence Helps, and Where it Stops
Use the new tools for everything that is information: the briefing document, dietary and accessibility data, budget scenarios, translation, pre-arrival communications tailored to each attendee, the seating plan that mixes people correctly each meal. These are hours of planner time, and they are the hours to give away first.
The limit is equally clear. No tool can sit at the table. The timing of a toast, the decision to let a dinner run long because it is going well, the host who notices the person sitting alone: these are judgments made on the ground, in the moment, by people who care about the outcome. Buy time with the technology. Spend it on people.
How you know it worked
Satisfaction scores measure the program. They do not measure the outcome. If the goal was connection, ask a different question ninety days later: how many working relationships exist now that did not exist before, and are they being used? A short follow-up to attendees, or a conversation with the sponsor, answers that better than any post-event survey. It also gives you the line for next year’s budget request.
What to Put in the Brief
When you brief a destination management company, the usual items are dates, headcount, budget and venue preferences. Add one more. State the outcome in human terms: who needs to know whom better by the end of this program, and what should have changed between them. A DMC that hears that will design differently. Seating, timing, venues and pace will all follow from it.
Ovation Global DMC works this way in 150+ destinations. More than 60 wholly owned offices and a Strategic Partner Programme share one standard, and that standard is about exactly this: the human experience on the ground.
Before the next brief goes out, cross out one plenary session and add one long dinner. Then write one line at the top of the document: who needs to know whom better by the end of this program. Everything else follows from that.
Read the companion piece: why bringing people together is the best investment a company can make.
FAQ
How do you design an event that builds connection: Fix the hours attendees will spend seated at tables of six to eight first, then fit content around them. Protect meals, mix seating, and leave the final morning free of content.
Why do shared meals matter at events: The World Happiness Report 2025 found that people who regularly share meals report higher wellbeing, an effect comparable to income or employment. Meals are where strangers become colleagues.
How do you measure whether an event built connection? Not with satisfaction scores. Ask ninety days later how many new working relationships exist and whether they are being used.