Corporate Events 101
We run corporate sports days and family days, public fitness events, community activations, wellness festivals and awareness campaigns. If it involves getting people moving, whether that’s 50 employees on a Friday afternoon or a multi-zone public event with thousands of visitors, it’s the kind of thing we do. We’ve delivered everything from a single company’s annual family day to a six month fitness hub at EXPO 2020 and a year-long network of community wellness activations across the Emirates with Ma’an. If you’re not sure whether your idea fits, ask us. Most of the time it does.
Honestly, less than you’d think. We know how business works in the UAE, plans move fast and decisions often get made close to the date, so we’re set up to turn events around quickly when we need to. More lead time always gives us more choice on venues and dates, and it matters more for anything large scale, multi zone or needing government approvals, but a straightforward corporate day can often come together in a couple of weeks. If your date is close, get in touch anyway and tell us what you’re after, we’ll give you an honest answer on what’s realistic rather than turning you away.
We’ve run events for small corporate teams and we’ve run events for up to 2,000 participants in a single day, like the G42 Annual Sports and Family Day. Scale changes how we plan things (staffing ratios, zone layout, medical cover, timing) but it doesn’t change whether we can do it. What matters more than headcount is what you want to happen: a few hundred people doing structured tournament matches needs different planning to two thousand people moving through open activity zones at their own pace. Tell us your expected numbers early so we can size the team and layout correctly.
No. We’re based in Abu Dhabi, with our flagship gym at the International Tennis Centre in Zayed Sports City, but we run and deliver events across the Emirates. Our EXPO 2020 fitness hub, for example, sat outside Abu Dhabi entirely, and we regularly get asked about community activations in other cities too. Wherever your organisation is based, we won’t ask you to come to us, we’ll bring the event to you.
No, not unless you already have one you’re set on. Plenty of clients come to us with a venue already booked, in which case we build the event around it. Others have no venue at all and want us to sort it, in which case we’ll recommend somewhere that fits your numbers, budget and the type of event you want, and we’ll manage the booking and logistics with the venue directly. Daman’s Family Day, for example, was hosted at ACTIVE Al Maryah Island Sports & Recreation as part of our full delivery. Either way works for us.
It depends on the scope, but typically we handle activity programming, staffing, equipment, safety and medical considerations, and on-site delivery from start to finish. For bigger activations that can extend to stage entertainment, kids zones, carnival-style games and coordinating other suppliers like photographers. For DCD’s Sports and Family Day we managed the multi-zone activity programming, staffing, safety and the entire on-site delivery. We’ll scope out exactly what’s included at the quote stage so there are no surprises on the day.
Yes, and honestly this is where a lot of our experience shows. Corporate sports days need options for people who play competitive sport and people who don’t exercise much at all. Family days need a completely separate stream for kids, from inflatable obstacle courses to a proper kids zone, while parents do something else. Our G42 events included a couples fitness challenge and a family mini Olympics alongside more serious sport, all running at once. Tell us who’s actually coming (ages, fitness spread, whether families are involved) and we’ll design around that rather than giving you one generic programme.
Yes, this is a big part of what we do. We’ve worked with Ma’an on turning 49 parks and malls into wellness hubs across a year-long programme, with Ethara on a Ramadan park activation, and delivered awareness campaigns and community training sessions around the Abu Dhabi Open Masters Games. Government entities and developers tend to have extra requirements around permissions, public safety, multiple stakeholders and reporting back to their own leadership, and we’re used to working within that.
The honest answer is coordination risk sits with us instead of you. When you book five suppliers separately, you’re the one making sure the caterer knows the timings, the entertainment doesn’t clash with the safety briefing, and someone’s actually in charge if something changes on the day. We plan and run the whole thing as one programme, so those handoffs are our problem, not yours. It also means the day has one coherent flow instead of feeling like separate bookings stitched together.
Both. Plenty of clients book us for a single annual event, like a yearly family day, and we simply do it again the following year once it’s worked. Others want something ongoing, like our year-long ACTIVE Communities programme with Ma’an, which ran 672 sessions across parks and malls, or the months of activation work we did leading up to the Abu Dhabi Open Masters Games. If you’re not sure yet whether you want a one-off or a recurring programme, that’s a fine place to start the conversation from.
There’s no single answer because it depends on numbers, venue, duration, and how much you want included, so we won’t quote a figure that means nothing without those details. What we can say is that cost scales with scope: a half-day activity for one office is a different budget conversation to a multi-zone public event with entertainment and medical cover. We’ll ask about your numbers and priorities upfront and give you a proper costed proposal rather than a vague range, and we’re happy to work within a stated budget and tell you honestly what that gets you.
Yes, this is built into how we plan any event, not an add-on. That covers things like first aid provision, risk assessments for physical activities, staffing ratios for the numbers involved, and weather or heat considerations, which matter a lot in Abu Dhabi. The level of medical cover scales with the event, an office team building session needs less than a public event with thousands of participants doing physical activities outdoors. We’ll talk through what’s appropriate for your specific event at the planning stage rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach.
We don’t just pack up and disappear. Depending on what you need, that can include feedback from participants, a debrief on how the day ran, and reporting back on turnout and engagement, which matters especially for corporate clients or government entities who need to report up to their own leadership. If it’s a recurring event, we’ll also use what worked and what didn’t to make the next one better rather than repeating the same programme by default.
Yes. Not every event we run is a 2,000-person activation, plenty are smaller corporate days, team building sessions or single-office wellbeing events. The planning approach is the same, we just scale the team, venue and programme to match. If anything, smaller events are a good way to work with us for the first time and see how we operate before committing to something bigger.
Get in touch and tell us roughly what you’re picturing: rough numbers, whether it’s a one-off or recurring, whether you have a venue, and any date you’re working towards. We’ll ask a few follow-up questions to properly scope it and then come back with a proposal. As an events company based in Abu Dhabi with experience delivering community activations across the Emirates, we’ve usually seen something close to what you’re planning before, so the early conversation tends to move quickly once we understand what you actually want the day to achieve.
Written by Rensché Graham Corporate Wellness Manager, HARAKA, August 2026
Reviewed by Sam Bolger, Managing Partner, HARAKA, August 2026