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| The Costa Smeralda brings together unspoilt nature, society haunts, cultural sites and top-quality hotels and resorts |
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This part of Sardinia is one of Italy’s most exclusive destinations, with plenty of great settings for events, such as restaurants, lounge bars, terraces, private beaches and ports. With the delights of the sea and hinterland to choose from, ideas for incentive programmes are not in short supply.
 
The Costa Smeralda has always been renowned for its glamour, even though its name, which refers to an 88 km stretch of coast in north-east Sardinia, was only “invented” in 1962 by Prince Karim Aga Khan, the first to appreciate the area’s great tourist potential and launch a successful development and marketing plan.
A charming coast peppered with small beaches, inlets and headlands against an emerald-coloured sea, and a hinterland steeped in history and tradition, which has yet to suffer from the effects of mass tourism: these are the ingredients of the incentive programme put together by DMC Turmo Travel. It offers an opportunity to get to know the true nature of this region, which remains unknown to many people despite its fame. Guests enjoy a very diverse range of transport for the three small “journeys” making up the programme.
They begin on quads, travelling along the dirt roads used for the Costa Smeralda rally, to reach the archaeological site of Arzachena and visit the Albucciu Nuraghe, the necropolises of Li Muri and the Tomb of Giants, an expression of the death cult of Nuraghi civilisation.
Then all aboard Elsa, the puffing locomotive dating back to 1930 of the little green train service, used exclusively for the journey that takes guests through a world of folk music, vineyards and cork forests against the backdrop of the sea, to the hinterland of Tempio Pausania and the Cantina Sociale Gallura wine cellars to taste Vermentino, Sardinia’s most famous wine. After, a surprise picnic using local produce under a giant age-old oak.
Finally, yachts, complete with skippers, are waiting at the moorings of the port of the Aranci Gulf to whisk the guests off to Tavolara. This island is located within protected waters, and is one of the least known and wildest of those surrounding Sardinia. Its inaccessibility, with cliffs several hundred metres high, interesting crags and depths, make it an ideal castaway location. With minimum equipment, participants must overcome challenging tests of survival: getting their bearings, searching for food and water, making fire and cooking, building rafts and shelters, climbing and diving.
The prizes for the trials are hidden treasure and a lobster lunch from the Da Tonino, re di Tavolara restaurant, one of Sardinia’s finest. The programme also includes evenings at exclusive yacht clubs, in trendy haunts such as Porto Cervo’s famous Billionaire, or in the hinterland, at holiday farms converted from traditional agricultural buildings. |
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COSTA SMERALDA AT A GLANCE
Number of Hotel Rooms
5-star: 928 rooms
4-star: 1,237 rooms
3-star: 882 rooms
Airport
Olbia Costa Smeralda Airport
Flights connecting the following European cities: Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Geneva, Graz, Hamburg, Hannover, Innsbruck, London, Munich, Nice, Paris, Stuttgart, Zurich
• HOTELS
• CONFERENCE AND EVENTS VENUES
• DMCs
Sardegna Convention Bureau |
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 Make contact
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 Luxury with personality
The accommodation offered by the destination is of the very highest quality, with more than two thirds made up of 4- and 5-star hotels where luxury, international-standard services and extensive conference facilities are expertly combined with a Mediterranean ambience.
The Cervo Hotel & Conference Centre, for example, has the design of a sea village, built around a central square, and is an oasis of refinement overlooking the piazza of Porto Cervo, the glamour resort par excellence. Still in Porto Cervo, spring will see the inauguration of the new 5-star Colonna Pevero Beach Hotel, 200 metres from the beach equipped with restaurants, bars, gardens and swimming pools. The Domina Inn Palumbalza, overlooking the private port in the bay of the Golf of Marinella, is built in stone, white limestone and terracotta, the traditional materials used locally. The Melià Poltu Qualtu, in the resort of the same name, also has a typical Sardinian style, and now boasts a new presidential suite with terrace and private pool. The other hotel of the Spanish chain on the island, the Meliá Olbia, has a modern feel: surrounded by 14 hectares of Mediterranean vegetation, it has excellent sports facilities and a 2,400 sqm spa with Thermarium, hydromassage baths, saunas, Turkish baths and beauty area with cabins for treatments. |
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Sardinian group Delphina’s news relates to Gallura, the area in the far north of the region, where it manages seven resorts: its latest arrival, the Valle dell’Erica Resort Thalasso & Spa, is now in the 5-star category following extensive upgrading. Its location is unique, just a stone’s throw from white sandy beaches and overlooking the crystal clear waters of the Island of Spargi. It has a 9-hole golf course, and a thalassotherapy centre and spa covering around 1,600 sqm in a beautiful natural setting. The Capo d’Orso Hotel has also gained 5-star status. This was Delphina’s first hotel, and has just been remodelled, with the addition of new suites and a spa.
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 Twelve in one: multi-activity in the heart of the island
A French multinational invited 300 guests, and exclusively hired the Club Mediterranee 2 ship for a cruise leaving from the Cote d’Azur with a stop-off in Sardinia. It asked DMC Barbagia Insolita to devise an activity for a day at the sea. “With a single standardised programme for hundreds of people, it is difficult to exploit the true value of the locations and activities, and there is a risk that the whole thing will be too banal”, explains Giovanni Sanna, the company CEO. “In the end, we opted for an innovative formula, the Incentive Multi Activity: a series of activities organised around the Golf of Orosei (100 km from Olbia), in the heart of the Barbagia region in the centre of Sardinia, with the ship moored in Cala Luna bay”.
The French group could individually choose from among 12 variations of the programme. The most energetic opted for trekking in the Cala Luna canyon or the Nuraghi village of Tiscali, surprising and magical, hidden as if in a fairy tale in the hollow of an enormous cave. The bravest equipped themselves with helmets and lamps, and took on the Lanaitto valley, where, among rock faces and limestone spires, there are numerous caverns to explore, many inhabited at the end of the 19th century by infamous bandits. Others climbed to the top of Mount Corrasi, one of Sardinia’s most beautiful natural landmarks, and the set of the Hollywood blockbuster The Ten Commandments, offering a spectacular view. The less adventurous could visit the Nuraghi villages of Sos Carros and Serra Orrios, or explore the Virgin’s Abyss, a cave that houses a stalagtite-stalagmite formation that is one of Europe’s highest natural columns, and an extremely deep chasm where the remains of ancient sacrificial offerings have been found. The programmes also catered for gourmets, who in the traditional pinettos (ancient stone shelters) could assist shepherds in their work, and then taste the cheeses and cold meats of times gone by.
The grand finale was when the groups converged on Oliena to recount their experiences and sample the food at the Su Gologone restaurant, one of the island’s best.
On request, the Incentive Multi Activity programme offers a stay at the Club Hotel Marina Beach in Orosei, a large complex with a multipurpose conference centre, or for smaller groups, at the Su Gologone itself, a country retreat with a spring water pool, fitness centre, wine cellar and rooms elegantly bedecked with antique furnishings, Sardinian fabrics and fine paintings.
January 2008 |
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