An offsite destination comparison has one column per candidate city and one row per thing you check. The flight rows come from route data: which offices fly nonstop (no change of plane), how long each flight is, in which months, and on how many airlines. The other rows come from the roster, quotes and the calendar. This page gives the template, says how to fill and score each row, and fills in the flight rows for one remote team with Midway’s route data as of 24 October 2026.
It does not repeat how to build the shortlist. The method for picking an offsite city from your team’s locations goes from roster to airports to the list of cities every office reaches nonstop. The template is the sheet you fill in once you have three to five cities from that list.
See every city Detroit, San Diego, Miami and Vancouver all reach nonstop
The comparison template
Copy the table into a spreadsheet or a shared doc. Rename the city columns, add one flight-time row per office, and keep the source column so everyone can see who fills which row.
Offsite destination comparison template
| Criterion | Source | City A | City B | City C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flight time from office 1 | Route data | |||
| Flight time from office 2 | Route data | |||
| Flight time from office 3 | Route data | |||
| Offices with a nonstop | Route data | |||
| Months with a nonstop from every office | Route data | |||
| Longest nonstop flight | Route data | |||
| Spread between longest and shortest flight | Route data | |||
| Fewest airlines on one office’s route | Route data | |||
| Share of headcount flying nonstop | Roster | |||
| Offices crossing a border | Office list | |||
| Entry documents needed | Roster | |||
| Time zone shift for the furthest office | Your research | |||
| Venue available for your dates | Venue quotes | |||
| Hotel nightly rate for the room block | Hotel quotes | |||
| Airfare estimate | Fare lookup | |||
| Activities outside the sessions | Your research | |||
| Weather in the offsite month | Your research | |||
| Airport to venue transfer | Your research | |||
| Weighted score |
How to fill in each row
Flight time from each office. Enter the scheduled nonstop time, or “connects” when there is none. Midway’s table shows the time from each departure airport for every destination they share. A city where one office connects can stay on the sheet, but that office then needs a fare quote and a layover the data cannot time. The guide to direct flights versus connections covers what to check before accepting one.
Offices with a nonstop. A count out of the total, such as 3 of 4. Name the offices that connect, because the discussion will be about them.
Months with a nonstop from every office. Some routes run only part of the year, so write the window, or filter Midway’s results to the month of the offsite. A city that passes in June can fail in February.
Longest nonstop flight and spread. The longest flight is the office that arrives most tired. The spread, the longest time minus the shortest, is the fairness check, and the method page treats a spread under about three hours as reading fair.
Fewest airlines on one office’s route. Midway lists the airlines on each nonstop route. A route flown by one airline has no alternative nonstop if that flight is cancelled or sold out, which matters more for a large office than a small one.
Share of headcount, border, entry documents. The route data counts offices, not people, so the headcount share comes from the roster. It is the row the usual standard of 80 to 90% of headcount nonstop applies to, as set out in the remote team retreat planning guide. Which offices cross a border follows from the office list. Which documents they need depends on the passports on the team.
Time zone, venue, hotel, airfare, activities, weather, transfer. These come from quotes for your dates and from your own research. The coast-split guide explains why a shift of one or two hours for everyone is easier on a short offsite than a large shift for one office. The airfare row is the flight cost method, and the budget breakdown lists the other costs that change when an office connects. Leave a row blank until someone has checked it, so the sheet shows what is still unknown.
Scoring the template
Score each row from 1 to 5 within the shortlist rather than against a fixed scale. The city with the shortest time, the smallest spread or the lowest rate gets 5, the one at the other end gets 1, and the rest fall in between. A 2h00 spread can lead one team’s sheet and trail another’s, so ranking within the shortlist keeps the scores tied to the decision in front of you. An office that connects scores 1 on its flight-time row.
Then weight the groups. The scorecard in the offsite pillar guide puts 40% on flight access, 20% on venue, 20% on cost per person, and 10% each on activities and logistics, which is a reasonable starting point. On this template, the route-data rows, headcount share and border row are flight access. Hotel and airfare are cost, activities and weather are activities, and time zone, entry documents and transfer are logistics. Average the rows inside each group before weighting, or a team with six offices ends up counting flights six times.
A filled-in example
The example team has offices in Detroit, San Diego, Miami and Vancouver (DTW, SAN, MIA, YVR). Around 25 destinations have a nonstop from all four airports in at least one month of the next twelve, and around 15 have one from all four in every month. The columns below are four cities from that list and one from outside it.
| Criterion | Denver | Dallas-Fort Worth | Austin | Toronto | Nashville |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detroit (DTW) | 3h05 | 3h05 | 3h10 | 1h10 | 1h40 |
| San Diego (SAN) | 2h20 | 3h05 | 3h00 | 4h50 | 3h45 |
| Miami (MIA) | 4h20 | 3h15 | 3h00 | 3h20 | 2h25 |
| Vancouver (YVR) | 2h50 | 4h10 | 4h15 | 4h25 | Connects |
| Offices with a nonstop | 4 of 4 | 4 of 4 | 4 of 4 | 4 of 4 | 3 of 4 |
| Months with a nonstop from every office | All year | All year | Oct 2026, May to Sep 2027 | All year | None |
| Longest nonstop flight | Miami, 4h20 | Vancouver, 4h10 | Vancouver, 4h15 | San Diego, 4h50 | San Diego, 3h45 |
| Spread between longest and shortest flight | 2h00 | 1h05 | 1h15 | 3h40 | 2h05 |
| Fewest airlines on one office’s route | 2 (Vancouver) | 1 (Vancouver) | 1 (Vancouver) | 1 (San Diego) | 1 (San Diego) |
| Offices crossing a border | Vancouver | Vancouver | Vancouver | Detroit, San Diego, Miami | Vancouver |
Flight times are the shortest scheduled nonstop over the next twelve months, rounded to 5 minutes. Spread is the longest minus the shortest time in the column, among offices with a nonstop. Midway route data as of 24 October 2026.
The other rows of the template are blank in this example, and the reader fills them in. Headcount share and entry documents need the roster. Time zone, venue, hotel, airfare, activities, weather and transfer need dates and quotes.
Reading the example
On the flight rows alone, Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver pull ahead. Dallas-Fort Worth has the smallest spread, 1h05, and no office flies longer than 4h10. Denver is the shortest flight for San Diego and Vancouver, and the only column where every office’s route has at least two airlines, but Miami flies 4h20. Which one scores higher on the weighted sheet depends on headcount. A large Miami office pulls towards Dallas-Fort Worth, a large Vancouver office towards Denver.
Austin passes only for an offsite in October 2026 or between May and September 2027, because those are the months the Vancouver flight runs. Toronto keeps every office on a nonstop all year, at 1h10 from Detroit and 4h50 from San Diego, but its 3h40 spread is the widest of the five, and it puts three offices across a border instead of one. Nashville fails for Vancouver, which connects in every month, and San Diego’s Nashville flight has no service listed for September 2027.
Scored on the spread row, among the four cities every office reaches nonstop, Dallas-Fort Worth gets 5, Austin 4, Denver 3 and Toronto 1. Nashville gets 1 on the Vancouver row, since that office connects.
See which cities Detroit, San Diego, Miami and Vancouver share in the month you plan to travel
Limits of the route data
Midway’s route data covers the 600 busiest airports in the world over the next twelve months. It lists nonstop flights, their scheduled duration, the months each one runs and the airlines on each route. It has no daily frequency, departure times, layovers or connecting fares, so a route with one airline can have several flights a day or one a week. The fare in Midway’s table is the cheapest direct round-trip from Kayak’s search data, which can be missing for a low-traffic route. (Midway earns a commission on flights booked through those links.)
Enter your offices’ airports in Midway to fill in the flight rows for your own candidate cities. The venue, hotel and weather rows stay blank until someone has a quote or a date, and between two cities with similar flight rows they are probably what decides.