The price of a retreat has to carry far more than the venue. Here is how to build it so the numbers still work when the group is smaller than you hoped.
Most retreat leaders start with the number they hope to charge and work backwards. It feels natural. It is also how leaders end up paying for part of the retreat themselves, because the price has to carry a lot more than the venue, and some of those costs only show up once deposits are paid and flights are booked.
List what stays fixed and what grows with each participant, add fees, a buffer and a fair return for your own work, and test the result against the number of people you think you can actually sell to. The venue’s capacity is not that number.
Every retreat budget has two kinds of cost.
Some depend on how many people come. Each participant needs a bed, three meals a day and a ride from the airport. Add one person and these go up.
Others stay the same whether you sell six places or sixteen. Your own flight is one. So are your room and meals, any co-teacher you bring, the marketing you pay for, insurance, and the hours you spend answering emails for months before anyone arrives.
Keep the two lists separate. That split is what tells you how many people you need before the retreat starts paying you anything.
Accommodation and meals are the obvious ones, and the first quote from a venue usually covers them. Read it closely, though. Check whether breakfast is included, and whether meals are full board or half board. Half board usually means breakfast plus one main meal, but always confirm exactly what the venue includes. A practice space may be part of the package, or it may be charged by the day.
Airport transfers are often priced per vehicle rather than per participant. How many people fit depends on the car and the luggage, and guests arriving on different flights may need several separate transfers.
Then there are the activities in your programme: a cooking class, a temple visit, a water blessing, a day trip. Some venues include a few. Most charge for them separately, often per person.
Your own stay. Leaders often leave themselves out of the room plan and then discover they are paying for a room like everyone else. Ask the venue directly whether the leader’s room is included in a group rate.
Some venues sell a whole area at a flat rate, which is good value when you fill it and expensive when you don’t. If the block has ten rooms and you sell seven places, you are paying for three empty rooms. We had a request recently for seven rooms from a group whose best fit was a ten-room area. At a flat rate, they would have been paying for three rooms nobody slept in. The same flat rate works the other way once a group grows, because the accommodation cost stays put while the numbers rise.
If you are teaching or running a programme in Indonesia, check which visa applies to you before you book anything. A holiday entry is not necessarily the right one. Ask your venue or a local agent early, because it takes time and has a cost.
Payment fees and exchange rates. Card and transfer fees take a few percent on both sides. If your participants pay you in one currency and you pay the venue in rupiah, leave room for the rate to move between the day you set your price and the day you pay the balance.
Leave a buffer as well, because something always comes up, usually an extra airport run or a day trip that goes over time. Ten percent of your costs is a reasonable cushion.
These figures are invented to show the method. They are not real prices from any venue.
Take a small yoga retreat of six nights. Each participant costs USD 150 a night for room and meals, so USD 900 for the week. Add USD 40 as their share of transfers and USD 150 for activities. That makes USD 1,090 per person.
The fixed costs are your flight at USD 1,200, your own room and meals at USD 900, marketing at USD 500 and insurance at USD 100. That comes to USD 2,700 before a single participant books.
Say you charge USD 1,800 per person. Each participant leaves you USD 710 after their own costs. Divide the fixed costs by that and you get 3.8, so you need four people just to break even. Ten people would leave you around USD 4,400 before the buffer and fees. Spread over the months of work behind it, that is less than it looks.
Now lower the price to USD 1,400. Each person leaves you USD 310, and you need nine participants just to cover your costs. A small cut in price can more than double the number of people you need.
If the venue can host sixteen people, don’t build a plan that only works with sixteen paying participants. Run the numbers at the size you realistically expect to sell, and again at a few people fewer. In the example above, a retreat priced at USD 1,400 that sells eight places loses money, even though the venue has room for twice as many. If the retreat only works when every bed is full, there is no margin left for a late cancellation or a slow month of sales.
Venues usually ask for a deposit to hold dates, then further payments as the retreat gets closer. Set your participants’ deadlines a few weeks before your own. You don’t want to be paying the venue’s balance out of your own pocket while waiting for transfers to arrive.
The same goes for cancellations. Read the venue’s terms and write your own policy to match. If a participant drops out three weeks before, you should know exactly who absorbs the cost.
Comparing venues gets much easier when every quote covers the same items. Ask each one for a complete price showing the room, meals, practice space, transfers and anything else they include, with a separate list of what costs extra. A low headline rate with five extras often ends up more expensive than a complete package. Our checklist for comparing retreat venues goes through those questions one by one.
Location and timing move the numbers too. Our guide to where to host a retreat in Bali compares the main areas, and the best time of year for a retreat in North Bali covers the seasons month by month.
At Poinciana we don’t publish a fixed retreat price list, because every group uses the property differently. Tell us your dates, expected group size and the kind of retreat you run, and within 48 hours we’ll send a proposal that sets out what is included and what is priced separately.
Work out your fixed costs and your cost per person, then decide on the profit you need. Divide the fixed costs by the margin you keep on each participant to see how many people you need to break even. If that number is close to the most you can realistically sell, the price is too low.
It depends on how high your fixed costs are compared with what each place leaves you. In the example above it was four people at one price and nine at a lower one. Run the numbers with the quotes you actually receive.
Usually, yes. Participants compare complete prices, and meals are hard to budget for on an island they don’t know. Including them also lets you plan the food around the programme.
Set your participants’ deadlines a few weeks before the venue’s, for deposits and for the final balance alike.