A retreat budget checklist, with the costs hosts forget

Why retreat budgets come up short

Retreat budgets usually come up short on the small costs nobody wrote down. The venue and the caterer send you a quote, so those numbers are easy to remember. Card fees, meals for your co-facilitator, and the insurance certificate the venue asks for two weeks out arrive one at a time, and they're easy to miss.

This checklist covers what a retreat really costs a host who sells tickets. It's written for multi-day gatherings, and most of it applies to a one-day workshop too. Work through it before you set your ticket price. The price can only be as good as the costs underneath it.

The venue and the beds

The venue is usually your biggest cost, and the first quote often leaves things out. Ask for the all-in number before you sign.

• Venue rental. Check whether the price is per day or per night, and whether setup and cleanup time are included. Arriving a day early to set up can cost a full extra day.
• Beds. If guests sleep on site, find out whether you pay per person or per room. Ask what happens to the beds you don't fill, since some venues charge for them anyway.
• A minimum guarantee. Some venues require you to pay for a set number of guests no matter how many come. Build your budget around that number.
• Cleaning fees and damage deposits. A deposit may come back to you, but the money still leaves your account weeks before the retreat.
• Linens and towels. Rustic and self-catered places often charge for these separately.
• Taxes and service charges on the venue bill. These can add a surprising amount to the quote. Ask for them in writing.

Food and drink

Food is the cost that grows fastest, because it multiplies by guests and by days.

• Every meal, every day. Count dinner on arrival day and breakfast on the last morning. Those two are the easiest to forget.
• Coffee, tea and snacks between sessions.
• Special diets. Ask the caterer whether gluten-free, vegan, or allergy-safe meals cost extra.
• A cook or kitchen help if the venue is self-catered.
• Gratuity or service fees on the catering contract.
• A closing dinner or celebration, if you're planning one.

One simple test helps sort these costs. If one more guest signs up, does the cost go up? If yes, it's a per-guest cost. If no, it's fixed. You'll need that split to price your tickets, and our post on how many people you need to break even shows why.

The people you pay or feed

Every person at your retreat costs something, including the ones who don't buy a ticket.

• Facilitators and guest teachers. Budget for their travel, bed and meals on top of the fee.
• Comped guests. Assistants, volunteers, a partner who helps in the kitchen, a friend who takes photos. Each one eats and sleeps like a paying guest and brings in nothing from tickets.
• Contractors. A photographer, a musician, a massage therapist, a driver. Check whether they quote a flat fee or an hourly rate, and whether travel is extra.
• You. Your own travel, bed and meals are real costs. Hosts leave themselves out more than anyone.
• Thank-you gifts for the people who helped.

A useful habit is to list every person who will be on site, then mark who pays and who doesn't. If four of them don't pay, that's four people's worth of food and beds coming out of your ticket money.

Money costs

These don't show up on any vendor's quote, which is exactly why they get missed.

• Card processing fees. Common payment processors take around 3% of every ticket, and some add a small flat fee per payment. On $10,000 in ticket sales, for example, 3% is $300.
• Booking platform fees, if you sell tickets through a retreat or event site. Check whether you or your guests pay them.
• Refunds. Decide your refund policy before you sell a single ticket, and plan for at least one guest to cancel.
• Payments you can't get back. Know which venue and vendor deposits are non-refundable and when each one is due. If you cancel after that date, that money is gone.
• Taxes on tickets. Depending on where you host, sales or lodging taxes may apply. Ask a tax professional before you set your price.

Insurance and the small stuff

None of these is big on its own. Together they can quietly eat a few hundred dollars.

• Event insurance, and the certificate many venues ask to see before you arrive.
• Permits, if you're gathering on public land or hosting a large group. Rules vary by place.
• Marketing. Ads, photos, a booking page, printed flyers.
• Supplies. Workbooks, journals, art materials, yoga mats, name tags.
• Welcome gifts for each guest.
• Getting people there. An airport shuttle, a rented van, parking, gas for supply runs.
• Equipment. A sound system, a projector, extra chairs, a tent if the weather turns.

Add a buffer for what you can't name

Add 10% of your total costs as a buffer. It covers the costs you couldn't have listed ahead of time, like a rate increase from the venue or a projector that dies the night before.

Treat the buffer as a real line in your budget and price your tickets to cover it. If you don't spend it, it becomes part of your take-home. That's a much better surprise than the other kind.

A worked example

Here's a three-day, two-night retreat for 16 paying guests, with a co-facilitator and an assistant who don't buy tickets. These numbers are an illustration, made up to show the math. Your venue, food and fees will be different.

Add it up: $4,300 + $3,600 = $7,900. The 10% buffer adds $790, so the retreat needs to cover $8,690.

Card fees come out of what you sell, so instead of adding 3%, divide by 0.97: $8,690 ÷ 0.97 = $8,958.76 in ticket sales. Split across 16 guests, that's $559.92 a ticket. This retreat breaks even at about $560 a ticket.

Break-even pays the host nothing, so add a take-home goal. With a $4,000 goal: ($8,690 + $4,000) ÷ 0.97 = $13,082.47, or about $818 a ticket.

Now look at what happens with a shorter list. Say the host only counted the venue, the co-facilitator's fee, and meals for the 16 paying guests: $2,400 + $1,000 + ($165 × 16) = $6,040. That works out to $377.50 a ticket, so they price it at $380.

Sixteen tickets at $380 bring in $6,080. The real costs, before any buffer, are $7,900 plus $182.40 in card fees, for $8,082.40. The host loses about $2,000, and that's if nothing goes wrong. Every missing line came from this checklist.

Run your own numbers

Once your list is done, the free calculator will tell you whether your ticket price covers it. Enter your price, your expected guests, your fixed costs and your cost per guest. It counts a 3% card fee on your sales and adds a 10% buffer for you.

If you'd like every line of this checklist in one place, with per-night and per-day costs and comped guests counted for you, explore the sample retreat. No account needed.