Tour de Force

Effective meetings include both productive work and relaxing pleasures. Most of the time, the focus is on the business at hand. But mixing in a little fun can boost group dynamics, get participants out of their hotels, and make a gathering memorable for more than just the work that got done.

Arranging a tour is a great way to add excitement and show off the area to out-of-town visitors. Tours are also attractive choices for “companion” activities, set up for people who are traveling with meeting participants but not attending the event.

Tours in the Twin Cities range from the scenic to the scandalous. We’ve highlighted five, but the Greater Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Association and the St. Paul Convention and Visitors Bureau can point you toward more  possibilities. One of them should be the perfect fit for your group.

Magical History Tour

Ordinary mortals tour the Minneapolis riverfront on foot. People on the Magical History Tour, on the other hand, travel by electronic, computer-controlled Segway.

The tour is a great introduction to the city of Minneapolis. However, Bill and Emily Neuenschwander, owners of the Bloomington-based tour company Mobile Entertainment, LLC, aren’t kidding themselves about why people take the tour. “Eighty percent of them want to ride the Segway,” Bill says. “Fifteen percent will take the history if they get to ride the Segway. And five percent are there purely for the history, but they say, ‘Man, that thing is cool!’”

First, participants get a bit of Segway training. Then, with their guide, they glide past the Pillsbury A Mill, across the Stone Arch Bridge, and through Mill Ruins Park, where guides take pictures of them on Segways. They stop for a break and a bite to eat at the Mill City Museum.

From there, the tour heads down the West River Parkway, past the Hennepin Avenue Bridge—site of the first permanent Mississippi River crossing—and past other milling facilities, including the Bassett Sawmill and Boom Island, where guides talk about the thriving local timber industry of the late 1800s.