Hotel teams spend their working lives making sure other people have a good time. So when Fairmont Bab Al Bahr, Abu Dhabi wanted to bring its own employees together, the job for HARAKA was simple to describe and harder to deliver: give 120 people from across the hotel an evening where nobody is looking after anyone else, and everybody gets to play.
A hotel team is spread across departments, shifts and floors, and it is rare to get everyone in one place at the same time. The aim was a relaxed, energetic evening that brought colleagues together, rewarded effort over skill, and felt like a celebration rather than a training session. The setting did a lot of the work for us. The event ran from 5pm to 8pm on the hotel’s own beachfront, which meant sand underfoot, the water within reach and the Abu Dhabi skyline changing colour as the evening went on.
The 120 employees were divided into eight teams, and each team had its own colour and its own identity, and you can see how seriously they took it in the video. Team names appeared on hand-made signs, such as the F&B Titans, the Bottom Lines and the Pink Peppers, and every group turned up in matching shirts, so the beach quickly became a patchwork of purple, red, yellow, green, pink and more.
Before a single game was played, each team also had a job to do: create a theme, write a war cry and choose a team song. This is a small detail with a big effect. A team that has just spent ten minutes arguing about a chant has already practised negotiating, compromising and laughing at itself, and it walks into the first challenge already behaving like a team. By the time the opening whistle went, the beach was loud with chants, and the competition between groups was friendly but very real.
The programme was a circuit of eight challenges, designed so that every team took part in everything and the mix of skills kept changing.
Tug of War opened the evening with the simplest kind of teamwork: everyone pulling in the same direction at the same moment. The Plank Walk asked a team to move together in step, which is a lot harder than it sounds when one person gets ahead of the rest. Fill the Bucket rewarded communication and a steady relay, while Ball and Tube was a test of patience and coordination, where a single careless moment meant starting again.
The Sack Race and Egg and Spoon Relay brought the laughs, with a mix of speed, balance and plenty of spills. In the Kayak challenge, teams took to the water, and with so many people splashing and cheering from the shore it became one of the loudest moments of the night. Cross the River asked each team to work out how to get everyone across, which rewarded planning and communication as much as speed. Finally, the Obstacle Course pulled everything together, with hurdles and cones that teams had to tackle one after another.
Across all eight, the principle was the same. No challenge depended on being the fittest or the fastest person in the group. The challenges that rewarded strength were balanced by the ones that rewarded planning, balance or sheer enthusiasm, so every employee had a moment where they were the one the team needed.
One of the best things about an early evening beach event in the UAE is how much the setting changes in three hours. The first challenges took place in warm, late afternoon light, with the hotel’s cabanas and palm trees behind the teams. As the sun dropped, the mood changed. Floodlights came on, the skyline lit up across the water, and the energy on the sand picked up rather than dropped. The later challenges, including the tug of war and the obstacle course, were played under lights with the whole beach watching, and the noise from the supporters was a big part of the atmosphere.
Starting at 5pm is a deliberate choice for outdoor events in this region. It gives teams the benefit of cooler conditions as the day ends, keeps the pace comfortable, and turns sunset into part of the programme rather than something to plan around.
Large groups are the hardest to get right, because the risk is that people spend most of the event standing and waiting. With eight teams running through eight challenges, the programme was built around keeping everyone moving and involved, with HARAKA facilitators guiding each station and keeping the scoring and timing fair and clear.
The other ingredient was ownership. Because teams chose their own names, themes and chants, the evening belonged to the employees from the start, and the humour and rivalry came from them rather than from the programme. People who might normally stay in the background found themselves leading a chant or cheering on a colleague from another department, and that is where most of the lasting value of an event like this comes from.
Using the hotel’s own beachfront also kept things simple for everyone involved. There was no travel, no extra venue to book and no logistics for employees to worry about on the day, so people could arrive straight from work and step into the evening. For organisations with outdoor space of their own, whether a beach, a garden, a car park or a large courtyard, it is a reminder that a memorable team day does not always need a new location, just a well-designed programme.
A beachfront evening is one format among many. HARAKA designs team building experiences for companies and hotels across the UAE, from half-day activities in the office to large outdoor programmes with hundreds of people. If you would like to explore what a day like this could look like for your organisation, you can read more about our approach on our team building page at https://harakauae.com/team-building/, see what influences the cost of an event at https://harakauae.com/cost-of-team-building-day/, or get in touch through https://harakauae.com/contact/ with your group size and preferred time of year.
Written by Rensché Graham, November 2026
Reviewed by Sam Bolger, November 2026