WHO WE ARE
The company “Armonia-Zen” was founded in 2005 with the aim of organizing quality excursions in nature, thanks to the persistent efforts of two people with unlimited love for the mountain and the environment, skiing, snowboarding, rafting and outdoor activities in general. Two people with vast experience in the field of excursions with outdoor activities since 1988, two physical education teachers with postgraduate studies and international degrees in skiing and snowboarding. By Giannis Makris and George Fragkiadakis.
Giannis Makris
George Fragkiadakis
Skiing and snowboarding excursions
At the beginning, we mainly dealt with what we knew best, namely the organization of skiing excursions, selecting a team of excellent certified ski and snowboard instructors, who shared our vision for further spreading skiing in our country. Our constant personal presence on our excursions, the serious organization, the reasonable prices, the excellent partnerships (Ski Bill/Klaoudatos for equipment rental, “Grand Chalet”/”Aggelos” for meals, “Luxury Transportation Services – LTS” for buses), the careful selection of our partners/instructors, as well as the continuous training (with regular seminars every year) and their guidance by us, brought excellent results.
Soon, an increasing number of private and several public schools, parents’ associations, cultural associations, as well as Municipalities of Attica and other organizations, began to trust us with the organization of ski & snowboard excursions. Currently, for example, we are the company with more visits to the Kalavryta ski resort than the total number of visits of all other group visitors to the ski resort combined (associations, organizations, schools, companies, etc.).
School trips and environmental excursions
Our great love for our field, children, ecology, but also our desire to become ever better, led us to the effort to extend children’s contact with nature beyond the short ski season in our country. Thus, after first training ourselves, equipping ourselves with all the necessary equipment of excellent quality and after selecting the best experts for each activity, we gradually added other, mainly environmental excursions to our program, with more educational, sporting and experiential outdoor activities.
We also started organizing daily school trips and excursions for daily summer camps for private schools and Municipalities (a subject in which we have vast experience and expertise). In these new actions, we faithfully followed the successful recipe of skiing trips, placing as always special emphasis on serious organization, the careful selection of Physical Education Teachers – Educators and the excellent quality-cost ratio.
Adult participation
The success of the excursions and outdoor activities we organized quickly attracted a large number of adults who wanted to participate in our excursions. By adapting our excursion program, we now have options for children only or adults only and of course our strong point is the organization of excursions with activities adapted to families with children.
Because many of our school clients encourage the participation of parents in the excursions and activities we organize, soon many parents began to follow us on our excursions. In a completely natural and effortless way and without having planned it, we gradually began to include parents in our activities. We created original activities and games where the child and parent collaborate harmoniously, often coexist in the same group, discover elements or peculiarities of their character that they could not even imagine, learn from each other and most importantly, create what is so rare these days: shared memories of play, fun, entertainment and, above all, collaboration.
The beautiful happy smiles of young and old during our activities, as well as the special, more friendly than professional relationship we create with them, are the best reward for our work.
Children’s Parties
A few years ago, the owner of a private school in Piraeus, who has been entrusting us with all of his school’s excursions for many years, with the participation of his own 4 children, asked us to organize his son’s birthday party in a beautiful sports field in P. Faliro. When we asked him what we could do since we organize activities in nature, his disarming answer was: exactly what you do on your excursions and my children like it so much, they asked me to organize similar activities here too, adapting them to the space.
That was it… It was like starting over again. We bought or built many imaginative games with our greatest success, the wooden survivor-style adventure track, which soon became the favorite activity of young and old. When, again almost by chance, the idea of including parents, grandparents or companions in activities/games was born, we found that our parties were much more successful. Instead of parents sitting motionless in a chair and begging for the time to pass as quickly as possible so that they could leave and the “chore” would end, we used the magic phrase: “in the next game, children, you can only participate with an adult”, which changed everything. After being shy at first, the parents were now “pulling” the child by the hand and asking impatiently: “where are we going and what are we playing now?”
Corporate events
Until a few years ago, the concepts of team building, team bonding, corporate getaways for executives, for strategic planning, for Leadership or for Extreme Sports, were almost unknown to us. When a client/friend from our skiing & snowboarding excursions asked us to organize a large company “cake cutting” event at the Parnassos ski resort, we faced the biggest, most exciting and perhaps most interesting challenge for our company. We discovered the vast field of corporate actions with its infinite challenges and possibilities.
First we trained and selected the best partners and then we adapted our experience and expertise from our prior events to this new subject. Our philosophy from the beginning was: we do not “sell” run-of-the-mill events, but we cover the needs of our corporate clients.
We face each collaboration as a new challenge and our greatest satisfaction is the acceptance of our proposals and our happy corporate clients after the completion of each event.
Our desire to meet the many and diverse needs of our corporate clients has led us to “discover” and “adapt” many activities/games, or even create completely new ones. In recent years, in addition to the many physical activities-games, we also offer several mental activities-games (the “mental heptathlon” that we invented and successfully organize).
Why us
For personalization. We adapt to the needs and specificities of each client. There will almost never be two of our excursions or activities that are the same.
For our organization. Each of our excursions or activities is organized with special attention and emphasis even on the smallest detail.
For variety. We offer so many choices of destinations, activities and games that we are sure to meet your wishes and requirements.
For our interpersonal relationship. One or both of our company founders are always present at each of our excursions or activities.
Armonia-Zen is not just another company in the field of excursions/activities. The focus is not on profit, but on Man and Nature. In an era when we all have a lot on our plates, our greatest satisfaction is to create moments with joyful, smiling and happy people with our activities.
Signed,
Giannis Makris
George Fragkiadakis