A Storybook Ending for Qualifiers of Our Switzerland Travel Incentive Trip

NOTE: Advanced practice clinician business can help you qualify for our 2025 trip to Lausanne, Switzerland. View our updated Agent/Broker Travel Incentive Eligibility Requirements to find out how.

Our apologies to anyone reading this with lactose intolerance, but we would be remiss to talk about our 2024–2025 Agent/Broker Travel Incentive trip to Lausanne, Switzerland, if we did not cover one of the Swiss’ most famous indulgences: cheese.

Now, here in America, we’re all used to the common version of Swiss cheese—holes and all—that is ubiquitous in fast food and restaurant dishes across the country. But for this issue of The Agent’s Advocate, we’re speaking more to the cheese aficionados as we take a stroll through Gruyères, a charming medieval village with cobblestone streets and its own castle and cheese dairy.

Just a few years back, Gruyères, Switzerland, officially joined the United Nations World Tourism Organization’s list of “Best Tourism Villages by UNWTO.” You can actually take a Swiss chocolate and cheese train from Montreux, Switzerland, next to Lake Geneva, and you’ll be treated to chocolate-filled croissants and hot chocolate with stunning views of the Alpine regions along the way to the mountainous village of Gruyères.

As if it’s straight out of a storybook tale, the village was developed after the Count of Gruyères built his castle on top of a hill in an effort to control the upper Saanen Valley in the 13th century. As one of the most prestigious castles in Switzerland, the Château de Gruyères towers majestically above the quaint village and puts visitors through a time warp of eight centuries of history, architecture, and culture.

Today, the medieval fortress showcases prominent collections of relics from its long and eventful past. Visitors travel back through the ages to observe its remarkable treasures: stained glass windows from the Middle Ages; wall decorations commissioned by the bailiffs under the Ancien Régime; paintings by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot; and the troubadour decorations of the Knights’ Room, created in the 19th century by a colony of passionate artists.

And Gruyères itself is a land of legends. Lend your ears to the locals and discover stories of La Belle Luce, the jester Chalamala, John the Cripple, and the brave women of Gruyères who used their goats as weapons to save their village from enemy invaders.

After working up an appetite roaming the castle and making your way down the cobbled village paths, you’ll find another staple of both Gruyères and Switzerland: La Maison du Gruyère, or the cheese dairy.

La Maison du Gruyère provides you with an interactive exhibition on industrial cheesemaking, cheese-sampling opportunities, a shop to purchase take-home goodies, as well as a fondue restaurant.

It is here at the cheese dairy that you’ll uncover all the secrets of making the world-renowned Le Gruyère AOP. The tour at the dairy is given from the point of view of Cherry the cow, who guides you through a modern world of the senses (you’ll even sniff some of the botanicals alpine cows eat) to the end production of the soft, sweet, and salty Gruyère here in its motherland. Word has it that you can even find a special Gruyère edition of Toblerone chocolate to bring back to your hotel room for a reminiscent snack.

To cap off the tour, visitors can partake in the age-old Swiss tradition of community and togetherness by sitting with loved ones and dipping bread in different fondues over a glass of wine.

If all this doesn’t pique your interest enough, throw in a trip to Gruyères’ HR Giger Museum for good measure. Putting a unique, modern twist on a deeply historical town, visitors can see the Oscar-winning artist’s surreal sculptures, paintings, and film designs for Alien, Alien 3, and Poltergeist II: The Other Side.

A day excursion to this enchanting village is just one of the optional activities we’ll be offering qualifiers of the 2024–2025 Agent/Broker Travel Incentive. There’s so much more that will be revealed over the next few issues of The Agent’s Advocate, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for future articles as we detail the wonderful experiences to be had in Switzerland from September 28–October 2, 2025.

*Based on individual agency location production/retention, as opposed to agency group production/retention.

†Only the first completed quiz per agent will be counted; however, there is no limit to the number of agents who can take the quiz. The quiz score that is recorded is the quiz with the highest number of correct answers per agency location. 

Legal Notice: In the event any dispute should arise concerning any aspect of the 2024–2025 Agent/Broker Travel Incentive, such dispute shall be resolved by The Doctors Company. The decision as to any dispute concerning the Agent/Broker Travel Incentive shall rest in the sole discretion of The Doctors Company, and such decision shall be full, final, and not subject to any further review. Wholesale brokers of The Doctors Company and TDC Specialty Underwriters are not eligible to participate in the Agent/Broker Travel Incentive.