Most retreat leaders read the venue contract after they have announced the dates. That order is backwards, and it is the single most expensive habit in this business.
Your cancellation policy is a promise you make to your participants. You cannot responsibly make it until you know what promise the venue has made to you, because any gap between the two is money that comes out of your own pocket.
This is what to settle, in what order.
The three dates that actually matter
Everything else is detail. These three decide whether a retreat that underfills costs you a difficult conversation or a five-figure loss.
The date the venue counts heads. Every venue has a point at which your final number is locked and the invoice stops moving. Find it, in writing, before anything else.
The date your participants can still withdraw. This is yours to set, and most leaders set it by instinct or by copying somebody else’s page.
The gap between the two. If the venue locks at sixty days and you let people withdraw at thirty, you have given yourself a thirty-day window in which someone can leave and you still pay for them. That gap is not wrong. It is a commercial decision, and it should be a deliberate one, priced into your ticket rather than discovered in month four.
Align the two dates and the problem disappears. Keep the gap and charge for it. Either is defensible. Not knowing there is a gap is not.
What a whole-camp rate changes
With per-person pricing, a participant who withdraws reduces the venue invoice, so the venue absorbs part of your problem. With a whole-camp rate, the invoice does not move, so you absorb all of it.
That sounds like an argument against whole-camp pricing, and for a leader who habitually underfills, it is. For a leader who fills, it is the reverse: every guest past break-even is almost pure margin, because the cost has stopped rising.
Know which of those two you are before you choose the pricing model. Your last three retreats will tell you honestly, and your hopes will not.
The clauses worth reading twice
Force majeure, and what it actually lists. Read whether it covers only the venue’s inability to host, or also your inability to travel. Those are different events with different consequences, and many contracts only address the first.
What happens if your numbers fall below a stated minimum. Some venues have a floor. If yours does, know whether dropping below it cancels the booking, triggers a surcharge, or is simply your problem.
Whether the deposit is transferable to new dates. A retreat that does not fill is often better postponed than cancelled, and whether that option exists is decided by one line in the contract.
Who the contracting party is. You personally, or your company. If you have an entity, use it, and if you do not, know that you are signing personally.
What we do, stated plainly
We are one venue and other venues do this differently, so treat this as one worked example rather than an industry standard.
A deposit holds the dates. The balance falls due before arrival. Both figures and both dates go into the written proposal before you announce anything, precisely so you can build your own terms on top of them.
We hold dates while you sell, with the terms agreed in writing first. A hold without written terms is worth nothing to either side, and a leader who announces on a verbal understanding is carrying an unpriced risk.
If your group lands under target, talk to us early. A retreat that underfills is a normal event and there are usually options: adjusting the format, moving dates, or in some cases reducing scope. What removes those options is silence until four weeks out, when nothing can be changed and everything has been committed.
The order that works
- Ask for the written proposal with every line itemised.
- Read the three dates, and the four clauses above.
- Write your own participant terms so they sit inside the venue’s, or deliberately price the gap.
- Then announce.
Steps one to three take about a week. Doing them in the wrong order has cost people we know a year of income.
Before you write to us
Your dates, your group size, and the shape of the programme. You will get a written proposal with every line broken out, which is the document your accountant and your own contract both need.
Related: the economics of hosting at a whole-camp venue and the retreat leader’s guide.
