Yachtmaster of ceremonies

There are moments in life that are suddenly so surreal you just have to step back and take it all in. At the end of February, standing in one of the large, ornate halls of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, one of the finest in Europe, I had one such moment.

In front of me, a team of captains and other industry people crept tactically toward a queen, vying for a code to unlock the exit door, while around me, 100 more captains, plus owner representatives, surveyors, Benetti team members and other guests cheered on, held back by the masked henchman of an arch-criminal called Mr X (who presumably this time last year would have been called Mr Twitter).

It was the denouement to an extraordinary team-building exercise for which Benetti had taken over the entire museum to stage a giant escape-room experience for 300 Benetti guests from all over the world. Clues and puzzles took us on a tour through the extraordinary art hanging on the museum’s walls as teams talking animatedly in Italian raced against the clock to earn honour and possibly a prize. It was also a timely reminder that when Benetti does a conference, it’s quite unlike any other conference you will have ever been to.