Most incentive trips fail in the same way. Somebody books a good hotel, adds a dinner, bolts on an activity that lasts ninety minutes, and hopes the combination adds up to a memory. It rarely does, because nothing in it was difficult, and people do not bond over things that were easy.
A buggy raid is difficult in a specific, controlled way. You spend most of a day driving a two-seat machine across terrain that changes under you, with a guide ahead and a mechanic behind, and at the end of it you arrive somewhere you could not have reached any other way. That shared arrival is the thing that actually works.
What a raid is, and what it is not
It is not a circuit. There is no fenced track behind a hotel, no lap counter and no queue for the next group. The three raids we run are point to point routes across southern Morocco, and the shortest of them covers the sixty kilometres of piste between the last paved road in the country and our camp in the dunes of Erg Chegaga.
It is also not a race. Six buggies is a hard maximum, the group rides together, and the guide sets the pace for the least confident driver rather than the most eager one. Anyone hoping to disappear over a dune alone will be disappointed, and we say so before they book rather than after.
What it is: a full riding day with a long lunch laid out on rugs, three surfaces to learn, and a camp at the end of it that is closed to everyone except your group.
The three routes, and which one fits a corporate group
M’Hamid to Erg Chegaga. Sixty kilometres of piste, roughly half a day of riding, then three nights at camp. This is the one most corporate groups should take. It gives you the whole experience without asking anyone to take an extra two days off work.
Zagora to M’Hamid, then the erg. Ninety-eight kilometres down the last inhabited stretch of the Draa valley before the sixty into the dunes. A full riding day. Good for a group that has done something like this before and wants more of it.
Ouarzazate to Erg Chegaga. Two riding days with a night in a kasbah in the valley between them. This is a serious undertaking and it suits a small senior group with time, not a broad team reward.
All three end the same way, with three nights at the camp on full board, and all three are quoted rather than priced from a list.
How the day is actually run
This is the part that decides whether your group has a good story or an incident report.
A lead guide from M’Hamid rides in front and sets the line. A closing mechanic rides last, which means no participant is ever the final vehicle on the route. A 4x4 shadows the whole way carrying water, spare parts, tools and a medical kit, and it also carries the luggage, so nobody is driving sixty kilometres of piste with a suitcase strapped behind them.
Before anyone commits to the route there is a briefing and a practice loop on open sand near the start point. That loop is not a formality. It is where the person who has never driven on sand learns what the machine does when the front end pushes wide, and it is where we quietly work out who needs to be near the guide.
There is no mobile coverage once you are in the erg. The team carries satellite communication with the camp.
Who this suits inside a company
In our experience it lands best with three kinds of group.
Sales teams being rewarded. The people who win these trips have usually been to good hotels already. They have not driven across a desert.
Small leadership groups. Eight people who spend a day solving a shared physical problem talk differently at dinner than eight people who spent the day in a conference room. We do not oversell this, but it is consistently true.
Client hosting for a small number of significant relationships. Six to eight guests, one host, no presentation. The trip is the message.
It suits nobody who needs to be reachable during the working day, and it is a poor fit for a group with a wide spread of physical confidence unless you are willing to have some people ride as passengers, which is entirely normal.
The limits worth knowing before you propose it
Season. October to April. We do not run raids between May and September, because a full day in an open vehicle in Saharan summer heat is not something we are prepared to sell.
Group size. Two to twelve riders. Twelve is the ceiling because six buggies is the ceiling. A larger group can be handled across consecutive departures, or by combining the raid with a full camp privatisation, and we will tell you plainly which of the two actually works for your dates.
Licences. An ordinary driving licence is enough. No special category is required.
Children. Passengers only, minimum age eight. The harness and roll cage are sized for adults.
Weather. Two or three times a season the wind gets up and visibility drops. When that happens the raid is shortened or postponed by a day. We would rather move it than run it badly.
What it costs
Each raid is quoted rather than priced from a list, because the number of riders, the route and the season all change what it takes to run properly. What we can tell you is the shape: the camp is taken by one group at a time, and the camp portion is a flat rate for the whole camp rather than a per-person tariff that falls as you add people.
Send us the dates, the number of riders and which of the three routes appeals, and you will have a written proposal with everything itemised.
The honest version
A buggy raid is not a wellness experience and it is not restful. There is dust, there is heat in the middle of the day even in season, and at the end of it your group will be tired. What they will also be is somewhere almost nobody they know has been, having got there under their own hands.
That is the whole proposition, and if it sounds like the wrong fit for your group, it probably is. If it sounds right, tell us your dates and we will build it properly.
Further reading: the full buggy raid routes and FAQ, and what a private camp buyout actually costs.
