Free tool
Retreat Profitability Calculator
Enter your guest count, price, and costs. See live revenue, profit margin, profit per workday, and breakeven occupancy. No signup required, share your numbers via link.
Revenue
How much you bring in.
Retreats commonly charge €800–€2,500 per person depending on duration and positioning
Costs
What it costs you to run the retreat.
Per-night rate for venue + accommodation. Dutch retreat venues commonly run €500–€1,200 per night for groups of 10–14
Retreat-quality food typically runs €30–€55 per guest per day
Budget for ads, content, supplies, payment processing, and a contingency buffer
Net profit
€4,268
At €1,200/person with 12 guests, you'll net €4,268 — a 30% margin.
- Total revenue
- €14,400
- Total costs
- €10,132
- Profit margin
- 30%
- Profit per workday
- €427
You need at least 8 guests at €1,200 to break even.
Share these numbers
Send your draft to a co-facilitator, partner, or accountant to gut-check your assumptions.
How to use this calculator
- Set the group size and number of nights for your retreat — most working formats sit between 8 and 16 guests over 3 to 7 nights, depending on retreat type.
- Set the price per guest using the benchmark range, then sanity-check it against comparable European retreats in the same niche.
- Enter every cost line you have on paper — venue, food, your own facilitator fee, any co-facilitators, marketing, travel, and insurance.
- Read the live summary on the right for profit, margin, breakeven occupancy, and profit per planning day, and stress-test the numbers at 60 to 70 percent occupancy before committing.
What goes into retreat pricing
A retreat price has to cover three layers of cost, and the structure is broadly the same whether you run yoga, wellness, meditation, or coaching programs. The first layer is your direct, out-of-pocket spend: accommodation, meals, transfers, materials, and any specialist fees you pay per session. The second layer is the costs that are easy to forget — payment processing fees of around 3 percent, insurance, contingency for currency or supplier price changes, and the income you give up while you are running the retreat instead of your normal work. The third layer is your own compensation as the host, treated as a real budget line rather than whatever happens to be left over.
Industry expense breakdowns put venue at roughly 30 to 45 percent of the total budget, staff and facilitators at 20 to 30 percent, food and accommodation at 15 to 25 percent, marketing at 10 to 20 percent, and materials at 5 to 10 percent. A 5 to 15 percent contingency buffer on top of those is the standard cushion for unexpected costs. If your numbers do not leave a 25 to 40 percent net margin after every layer is accounted for, the price is too low for the program you are actually running. If your retreat fits a specific niche — yoga, wellness, meditation, coaching — the niche calculators surface the cost lines and benchmarks that matter for that audience.
Benchmark pricing across retreat types
European retreat pricing varies meaningfully by category, and a single benchmark range across all retreat types is misleading. As a working overview: yoga retreats run roughly €900 to €1,800 per person for a mid-range 5 to 7 night week, with budget at €400 to €800 and premium at €2,000 and above. Meditation retreats sit lower at €700 to €1,200 per person for 3 to 5 nights, with donation-model and sliding-scale programs from established centers (Plum Village, IMS, Spirit Rock) tiering between €400 and €1,070 per week. Wellness and detox retreats run €1,500 to €2,500 per person for 6 to 8 nights at the mid-range, climbing to €5,000 and above for medical-wellness destinations. Coaching retreats vary the most widely — €2,000 to €4,000 for entry-level group programs, €4,000 to €8,000 for business and leadership intensives, and €15,000 to €30,000 for executive masterminds.
Group size and duration cluster differently per category as well. Yoga retreats land at 8 to 15 students over 4 to 7 nights; meditation retreats run 12 to 16 sitters over 3 to 5 nights, with longer 7 to 10 night silent intensives at the upper end; wellness retreats hold 10 to 20 guests over 6 to 8 nights; coaching retreats stay smaller at 4 to 8 participants over 3 to 5 nights because the product is concentrated facilitator attention. If your retreat clearly belongs to one of these niches, use the dedicated calculator — the cost lines, default values, and benchmark ranges are tuned to the audience and pricing logic of that category.
How to calculate your breakeven
Breakeven is the number of guests at which revenue exactly covers total costs — your retreat is no longer losing money but is not yet making any. To calculate it, separate fixed costs (the ones that stay the same whether 6 or 16 people show up: venue minimums, your fee, marketing already spent, insurance, travel, any specialist booked on a flat day rate) from variable costs (food per person per day, transaction fees, anything that scales with attendance). Then divide fixed costs by the contribution margin per guest, which is your price per guest minus the variable costs per guest. The result is the number of confirmed bookings that pay for the retreat before you make a euro of profit.
A useful target is breaking even at 60 to 70 percent of your maximum capacity. If you have 15 spots, the retreat should cover its costs by around 9 to 11 sign-ups; for a small coaching cohort of 6, by around 4. That cushion is what protects you when two people drop out the week before, when a deposit refund is unavoidable, or when one room can only be sold as a single. Pricing that requires a sell-out to be profitable puts the entire retreat under stress every cycle, and operator data consistently shows retreats hitting 90 percent occupancy roughly double the net profit of those at 60 percent because so much of the cost stack is fixed.
Common pricing mistakes
The most common mistake across every retreat category is pricing as if a sell-out is guaranteed. A first retreat almost never sells out, and a price that only works at full capacity turns every empty bed into a personal loss. The second universal mistake is leaving your own time off the books. The months you spend designing the program, writing emails, running calls, and showing up before sunrise during the retreat itself are work, and a price that does not pay you for that work is a discount you are giving yourself without noticing. The third is skipping the breakeven calculation entirely and pricing on instinct — operator surveys consistently flag this as the single largest reason first retreats lose money.
Other recurring mistakes show up across every retreat type: forgetting payment processing fees of around 3 percent on every booking, ignoring the income you skip from your normal work during the retreat block, leaving no contingency for currency or supplier swings, and changing the price midway through a sales window. Once people have paid, raising or lowering the price creates refund requests and a credibility problem that costs more than the few extra euros it might earn. A 5 to 15 percent contingency line on top of the rest of the budget is the standard fix for the supplier-swing risk; a written, published refund policy is the fix for the rest.
When you can charge more
A higher price is defensible when something concrete justifies it, and the levers are similar across retreat types. Positioning is the first: a clearly defined niche — trauma-informed, postnatal recovery, founders in transition, mid-career professionals on sabbatical, a specific lineage or methodology — narrows the audience but lets the people inside that audience feel the retreat is built for them. That kind of fit usually supports a 20 to 30 percent price bump over a generic retreat at the same venue. Reputation does similar work: an established following, published work, a recognised credential (ICF, EMCC, MBSR, registered yoga teacher with significant teaching hours, certified naturopath), or years of experience leading retreats give prospective guests a reason to pay above market rather than choose the cheaper option next door.
Smaller groups also support higher pricing because attention scales inversely with attendance. A retreat capped at 6 to 8 with one-on-one time and individual integration sells at a different price than the same week with 20 participants. Premium guests are paying for the cap as much as for the program. The same applies to genuinely exceptional venues, in-house specialist staff, or treatments and integration sessions included in the package — but only if those things are real, deliverable on schedule, and not just language on a sales page. The cleanest test: would you pay this price as a guest, given the credentials and access on offer? If the answer is no, the price is wrong even if the math closes.
Marketing budget rules of thumb
A workable rule of thumb across every retreat type is reserving roughly 10 to 20 percent of the total retreat budget for marketing — paid ads, design, photography, landing pages, platform fees, and any affiliate or referral spend. First retreats often need the upper end of that range because there is no past attendee list to draw from; established facilitators with a warm email list sometimes spend less because their main channel is owned, not bought. The exception is coaching retreats, where established practices typically spend well under 10 percent because the dominant sources of bookings are warm — the existing 1:1 client list, past mastermind alumni, and referral partners — rather than paid acquisition.
On timing, retreat industry guides recommend opening registration 6 to 9 months before the start date for domestic retreats and 9 to 12 months out for international or destination retreats. Wellness and detox programs sit at the longer end because guests coordinate around medical schedules; meditation and coaching retreats often work with 4 to 8 months because the audiences are warmer and decide faster. The most reliable channels remain your own email list, an Instagram or content presence built before the launch, and word of mouth from past guests — paid ads usually amplify these rather than replace them. Vertical platforms like Retreat Guru, BookRetreats, Health and Fitness Travel, and Wellbeing Escapes can fill the audience gap on a first edition, at a typical commission of single-digit to mid-teen percentage of bookings.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if my retreat is priced correctly?
Three quick tests. First, the math: list every cost (venue, food, your fee, marketing, transfers, processing fees, contingency), divide by your expected attendance at 60 to 70 percent capacity, and check the per-guest price covers it with a 25 to 40 percent net margin on top. Second, the comparison: against three or four published European retreats in the same niche and tier, your price should not be the cheapest or the most expensive without a clear reason. Third, the personal test: would you pay this price yourself for the program on offer? If the math closes but you would not pay it, the offer needs sharpening before the price changes.
What is a healthy profit margin for a retreat?
A 25 to 40 percent net margin is the band most retreat business guides treat as healthy for yoga, wellness, and meditation retreats. Coaching retreats can hold higher — 40 to 60 percent — because the cost stack is structurally lighter and the facilitator fee does double duty as compensation. Below 20 percent there is almost no room for things to go wrong, which on a retreat is not an if but a when: late cancellations, supplier price jumps, a single no-show on a small cohort. The buffer is what separates a retreat that pays you for your time from one where you end up working for free after refunds settle.
How do I set the price for my first retreat?
Build the price from costs, not from what you think people will pay. List every line — venue, food, your own fee at a rate close to what you charge for normal work, marketing, transfers, processing fees, insurance — and add a 5 to 15 percent contingency for the things you have not thought of yet. Divide the total by 60 to 70 percent of your maximum capacity, not by full capacity, because first retreats almost never sell out. Compare the result against three or four published retreats in the same niche; if the number is far below the comparison, the price is too low and you are subsidising the audience. Once the price is set, do not move it during the sales window — discounting first retreats is one of the fastest ways to lose money and credibility at the same time.
How early should I open registration?
For a domestic retreat, opening 6 to 9 months out is a reasonable window. For international or destination retreats, 9 to 12 months gives serious travelers time to request leave, arrange flights, and commit a deposit. Meditation and coaching retreats often work with 4 to 6 months because the audiences are warmer and decide faster; wellness and detox programs sit at the longer end because guests coordinate around medical schedules. Earlier is rarely a problem; later usually is, because the people most likely to book are also the ones who plan furthest ahead.
What deposit should I require?
A 20 to 30 percent non-refundable deposit at the moment of booking is the most common structure across the retreat industry, with the balance due roughly 30 to 90 days before the start date depending on retreat type. High-ticket coaching retreats often run a 25 to 50 percent deposit because total prices are higher and the cohort is smaller; short meditation retreats sometimes run 30 to 40 percent because the absolute total is lower and a small percentage would not cover the venue commitment. Whatever the percentage, the deposit needs to be large enough to cover your non-refundable venue commitment for that bed, otherwise a single cancellation can cost you more than the deposit recovers.
How do I handle cancellations?
Publish a written policy before you take any deposit, and put it in the booking confirmation. A common shape is: deposit non-refundable from booking, full refund minus deposit if cancelled more than 90 days out, partial or no refund inside 60 days, no refund inside 30 days. Tighter windows apply on shorter or smaller retreats — meditation programs often cut to 14 days inside, coaching cohorts of 6 often run 30 days non-refundable end-to-end. Recommend travel insurance in the same email — it shifts the conversation away from your refund inbox when life happens. A transfer clause that lets a cancelling participant nominate a replacement is a quiet but useful addition: it keeps the cohort intact and the goodwill intact when the cancellation is genuinely unavoidable.
Should I price all-inclusive or modular?
All-inclusive is simpler to sell because the price on the page is the price the guest pays — no surprises and fewer abandoned checkouts. Modular pricing splits the same total into accommodation, retreat fee, and extras, and tends to read as more expensive even when the headline number is identical. Hybrid pricing usually wins: an all-inclusive base for the core retreat, plus a short, transparent list of optional extras (private sessions, excursions, treatments, airport transfers) that are genuinely optional and clearly priced. Operators report that thoughtful add-ons can lift average revenue per guest by 15 to 30 percent without damaging conversion on the base package.
Do I need an LLC or business entity to run retreats?
For anything beyond a one-off small retreat among friends, yes. Most retreat operators choose a limited-liability structure (BV in the Netherlands, LLC in the United States, Ltd in the United Kingdom, GmbH in Germany) to separate personal assets from the business in case of a dispute, an injury, or an unrecoverable supplier deposit. On top of the entity, professional liability insurance — sometimes called errors and omissions cover — is the standard protection for the work itself. The third piece is a written participant agreement and liability waiver signed before arrival, covering the activities you actually run. None of this is glamorous, but the absence of any of the three is the most common reason a single difficult retreat ends a facilitator’s career.
Should I use a retreat platform like Retreat Guru or BookRetreats?
Listing platforms put you in front of an audience already searching for retreats, which is genuinely useful for a first edition without a following. They take a commission — typically a single-digit to mid-teen percentage of bookings — so factor that into your price the same way you factor in payment processing fees. Vertical platforms tend to outperform generic ones for their specific niche: Retreat Guru and BookRetreats for general retreats, Health and Fitness Travel and Wellbeing Escapes for wellness, dedicated coaching directories for executive programs. Once you have a warm email list and recurring guests, direct booking through your own page usually outperforms platforms.
How much should I budget for marketing?
Plan for roughly 10 to 20 percent of the total retreat budget. First retreats usually need the upper end because there is no past attendee list yet, and most spend goes into landing pages, design, paid social, and platform or referral fees. Established facilitators with a warm email list and recurring guests can often hold marketing under 10 percent because their highest-converting channel is something they already own. Coaching retreats typically run lowest of all because the dominant booking source is the existing 1:1 client list and referral partners; wellness and detox programs typically run highest because health buyers research carefully and need long-form proof points before they commit.