It’s a pretty common question we get here, and an understandable one.  Using scavenger hunts for team building is a relatively common form of outdoor team building, whereas treasure hunts are less often seen.  Many don’t even know there is much of a difference.

But in our experience at Dr. Clue, there are plenty of reasons that treasure hunts are the better option, starting with the fact that they’re more uncommon. Employees have probably had to run through scavenger hunts off and on since grade school, and all too often they seemed more like “playtime” than any sort of educational exercise.

However, it goes deeper than that…

Why Treasure Hunts Are Better Than Scavenger Hunts for Team Building

Hunts Shows real effort.

A treasure hunt can’t be assembled in a few minutes, because treasure hunts are based on intricate puzzles and codes.  When you’re going to be putting your workforce through a major exercise, they should feel like as much work has been put into making it as they’ll put into solving it.  Going that extra mile makes the exercise feel more special, and more worthy of their attention.

Treasure hunts require teamwork.

With a scavenger hunt, everyone just gets a list of things to go find.

However, a good treasure hunt should feel more like people are in the “National Treasure” movies, solving obscure puzzles.  As in those movies, it virtually always becomes a true team effort, as the various puzzles and clues can be designed to require a wide range of skill types.  Logic puzzles, word puzzles, mathematics, spatial reasoning…  a well-designed treasure hunt could never be solved by one person, unless they were a true genius.

Creating a guided experience.

Back to the “list” thing with scavenger hunts, they create another issue:  Everyone knows ahead of time what they’re looking for, and it can often turn into a big mess of people running around all over an area – or a city.  With treasure hunts, the “Da Vinci Code” style of clues leading to actual locations (chosen by the clue master), means the hunt designer can direct people around with more intentionality and structure, keeping everyone on track in a more organized manner.

A treasure hunt is more focused, and it’s easier to relate the lessons learned back to your core business when you know everyone has had more or less the same experience.

In short, we prefer treasure hunts simply because they create better team-building.  They take more effort to plan, but the results are well worth it!

Contact us today for more information about our challenging and fun team building activities and events!