What where those 1,546 businesspeople doing in Las Vegas on April 15? Competing in the world's biggest scavenger hunt, of course.
The Vegas hunt was created by Scavenger Hunt Anywhere, which arms each team with a smartphone app. The app gives players a list of tasks and checkpoint locations; the three types of tasks are taking photos (e.g., "Take a photo of your team with the Eiffel Tower in the background"), answering questions, and visiting checkpoints, where staffers might ask player to solve a riddle or make a human sculpture. The team with the most points wins.
What sets the Scavenger Hunt Anywhere approach apart from the traditional treasure hunt, according to company president Andrew Long, is that participants can meet the challenges in any order they choose. In contrast, sequential treasure hunts tend to measure the fitness level of teams as they race to beat everyone else. He adds, "We used to do collected objects, but they were very messy and took a long time to score. They were also wasteful, so we don't do them anymore."
The Scavenger Hunt Anywhere team has conducted more than 1,500 hunts since its start in 2002, and even conducted one hunt with only five participants.
"Our program is designed to challenge your group's ability to prioritize, have a strategy, allocate roles on the team, manage their time, think outside the box and consider what the competition is doing," Long explains. "Think of it like cross-training for business people!"
