The four lines
An evening is rarely invoiced as a single amount, and that is just as well. Room hire, what arrives on the table, the entertainment and any overnight stay each follow their own logic, and only separated can they be steered.
The room is counted by the day and by space, whatever the headcount. The table is counted per person. Entertainment is counted sometimes per person and sometimes by unit, by gaming table for instance. The stay is counted by estate rather than by bedroom.
Ask for them in one go. A room price without the table beside it says nothing, and that is exactly where quotations stop being comparable.
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The figures we publish
The December format carries a fixed price per person: 89 € excluding VAT at the Christmas Village, covering the aperitif, the meal and a selection of wines and drinks, served by caterer TOC by Jean-Sébastien Prijot. It is the only format for which a single figure is enough.
Entertainment follows the same principle on a different unit. A gaming table with its croupier is 750 € excluding VAT for two to four hours, and you choose the number of tables: the bill follows the group rather than the other way round. The full sequence sits in our article on the casino evening.
Room hire and the stay are orders of magnitude rather than rates: they depend on the space, the day and the season. December follows a logic of its own on top of that. Ask for them with your date attached, or you will get a figure that does not describe your evening.
Where the budget really tips
Two of the four lines do not follow the headcount. The room costs the same for twenty-five people as for thirty-five, and the estate costs the same for twenty as for thirty-eight.
That is where the leverage sits. Every participant you add brings down the per-head amount on those two lines, while the table stays the same. A group of thirty-five pays noticeably less per person than a group of twenty, for exactly the same evening.
It is also the argument for bringing departments together instead of planning two smaller evenings. Twice twenty costs more than once forty, and produces half the encounters into the bargain.
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VAT: what we do, and what we do not do
We are not accountants and we do not give tax advice. That is not a cautious formula: the treatment of a staff party depends on elements that do not appear on our invoice, and a wrong answer costs more than it saves.
What we do instead is split the invoice. Room hire, catering, entertainment and the stay appear on separate lines. Your accountant needs that breakdown, because the lines are not treated alike, and a single-line invoice forces them to take the most cautious answer.
Two elements settle the question, and neither depends on us: who was invited, and who prepared and served the food. Put those two to your accountant before you book, not after. On an evening for forty people this is not a footnote in the budget.
Three questions of budget
What budget per person is realistic?
That depends entirely on the headcount, which is why we give no average at all. Give us your number and your date and you will get four amounts instead of one, with the lines you are free to remove.
Can a line be dropped?
Yes, and entertainment is the first to go when the budget tightens. We would rather you dropped the stay: an evening without entertainment is still an evening, a night with half the group rarely works.
Do prices change in December?
For the Christmas Village, no: 89 € excluding VAT per person is firm. For room hire and the stay, yes, which is why those two are asked for with your date attached.
Asking for the four lines
Give us your headcount, your date and whether your teams sleep on site. You receive the four lines separately, with the VAT rate on each, so your accountant can work from it straight away.
The starting point for all of this sits in our article on organising a staff party. The estates sit on the seminar page and the seasonal formats on Events.