How To Price Your Yoga Retreat And Take Deposits

You found the venue. It's perfect: an open-air shala, fourteen beds, a chef who cooks from the garden. Then the contract arrives, and it wants 25% to hold your dates, months before a single student has signed up.

This is where a lot of first retreats go wrong: not on the mat, but in the spreadsheet. The price was a guess, the deposit felt polite, and the teacher put the venue on a credit card and hoped bookings would catch up.

It doesn't have to work that way. Work out a few numbers in the right order and your students' payments reach your suppliers before their bills are due. Here's the method, with a worked example.

If you're still choosing a location and format, start with beYogi's guide to hosting a yoga retreat. This piece is about the money.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 

• Add up all your costs before setting your retreat price, including the venue, meals, travel, payment fees, and your own time.
• Figure out your break-even point so you know how many guests you need to book to cover your costs (without having to fill every single spot).
• Set your deposit based on what your venue needs upfront, not just what feels like a reasonable amount to ask guests to pay.
• Break the remaining balance into manageable monthly payments, and make sure guests finish paying before your big supplier bills are due.
• Have clear cancellation and refund policies, protect yourself with liability insurance, and keep a cash cushion for unexpected expenses.

How To Price Your Yoga Retreat And Take Deposits – Without Fronting The Money 

Step 1: List every cost, then sort it into fixed and per-guest

Sort every expense into two buckets:

• Fixed costs stay the same whether 6 or 14 people come: the venue buyout or minimum spend, your own flights, an assistant teacher's fee, marketing and photography.
• Per-guest costs rise with every booking: meals, excursions, airport transfers, welcome gifts and per-person taxes or resort fees.

Fixed costs are your risk; per-guest costs only show up once someone has paid. For every supplier, note how they charge and when they want to be paid. Those dates drive your payment schedule.

Two costs people forget: card fees, if your payment tool takes them out of your payout (add roughly 3% per guest), and your own pay. Your margin is what you earn for months of planning and a week of teaching.

Step 2: Find your break-even guest count

Break-even is the number of guests at which revenue covers every cost:

Break-even guests = fixed costs ÷ (price per guest − cost per guest)

The part in parentheses is what each booking contributes toward your fixed costs. Round up; you can't sell 8.8 spots.

I like to see a retreat break even at around two-thirds of capacity. If you only break even when the last bed fills, one cancellation turns the week into a loss.

Step 3: Set a price with margin

Work backward from that target, not forward from what feels comfortable to charge. Pick the guest count where you want to break even, then solve for price: fixed costs divided by that count, plus your cost per guest.

Then sanity-check it. The median retreat booked through SquadTrip was priced at about $1,906 per traveler, with the middle half between $855 and $2,975. Location, length, and rooms will move you within that range.

A Yoga Retreat Example: 6 Nights, 14 Guests

The retreat starts in early April; bookings open in early September.

Fixed costs: $15,000

• Venue, exclusive use for 6 nights: $12,600 (25% due at signing, the balance due 60 days before arrival)
• Assistant teacher: $1,200
• Your flights and transfers: $800
• Marketing and printed materials: $400

Per-guest costs: $600

• Meals from a private chef, 6 days at $60 a day: $360
• Two excursions (a boat day and a cooking class): $160
• Airport transfers: $40
• Welcome gift and mat rental: $40

Price: $2,300 per guest

• Each booking contributes $2,300 − $600 = $1,700 toward fixed costs.
• Break-even: $15,000 ÷ $1,700 = 8.8, so 9 guests (64% of capacity).
• At 12 guests: $27,600 in, $22,200 out, $5,400 profit.
• At 14 guests: $32,200 in, $23,400 out, $8,800 profit (a 27% margin).

Deposit and payment schedule

• Guest deposit: $460 at booking (20% of the price).
• Balance: $1,840 in four monthly installments of $460, October through January.
• Final guest payment due in mid-January, about 75 days before arrival.
• Venue deposit: 3,150,coveredonce7guestshavepaidtheirdeposits(3,220).
• Venue balance: $9,450, due in early February, after every guest's final payment has landed.
• Chef and excursions: paid in March or on arrival, from money already collected.

To run your own numbers, this free retreat pricing and payment plan calculator turns your costs into a break-even price, a deposit and a monthly schedule.

Step 4: Size the deposit to cover what you owe the venue up front

Size the deposit from your supplier contracts, not from what feels polite. The test: venue deposit ÷ guest deposit = bookings needed to cover the venue's deposit.

For a benchmark, SquadTrip's data on what group trips cost and how guests pay found the median deposit on a payment plan was about 15% of the trip price, with the middle half of trips asking 10% to 23%. In our example, 15% is $345, and you'd need 10 bookings to cover the venue's $3,150. At $460, you need 7.

So how do you avoid fronting the money?

• Ask the venue for a courtesy hold. Some will hold dates for a few weeks without payment, or split the deposit into a small hold fee now and the rest later.
• Pre-sell to your warmest students. Share the booking page with your regulars and email list first, and sign once their deposits cover the venue's.
• Know your gap if you must sign first. What you're fronting is the venue deposit minus deposits in hand, and it shrinks with every booking.

Step 5: Schedule installments so the balance lands before your supplier deadlines

Every guest's final payment should be due before your biggest supplier bill, with a cushion. The venue balance is due 60 days out, so guests finish paying at 75 days. Two weeks of slack absorbs a declined card or a late payer.

• Keep installments monthly and equal. Five payments of $460 are easier to say yes to than one of $2,300.
• Compress the schedule for late bookers. A December booker pays the deposit and splits the balance over the months left. After the final-payment date, guests pay in full.
• Open early and lead with the plan. In the same data, 57% of group trip bookings used a payment plan (44% on retreats), and plan bookers committed a median of 181 days before departure, versus 84 days for guests who paid in full.

Then automate it, because chasing 14 students for four payments each is 56 awkward messages. On SquadTrip, guests choose the payment plan at checkout, and installments charge automatically. It's free for hosts: guests pay a single 6% processing fee on top of your price (card fees included), so you receive the full $2,300 in your own Stripe or Square account.

Step 6: Write cancellation and refund terms that match your supplier contracts

Mirror what your suppliers will refund you: if the venue keeps its deposit, you can't afford to refund yours. For example:

• Deposit: non-refundable, but transferable to another guest.
• Cancel more than 90 days out: installments refunded, the deposit kept.
• Cancel 60 to 90 days out: 50% of installments refunded.
• Cancel within 60 days: no refund (the venue balance is paid), but the spot can go to a replacement guest.
• Missed payments: a 7-day grace period, after which the spot can be released under the cancellation terms.
• If you cancel: a full refund. Set a go/no-go date before the venue balance is due: if you don't have 9 bookings by mid-January, decide then, while the venue deposit is the only money at stake.

Encourage guests to buy travel insurance, and have each one agree to your terms before paying. On SquadTrip, guests answer your registration questions and agree to your waiver and refund policy at checkout, before they pay.

Your terms protect your cash; insurance protects you. Before you sign the venue contract, confirm that your yoga teacher liability insurance covers you where and how you'll be teaching, especially abroad.

Step 7: Keep a cash buffer

• Separate the money. Keep guest payments in a business account, not your personal checking.
• Don't spend the margin early. Until every bill is paid, it's your refund fund.
• Hold a buffer of at least the venue deposit or 10% of total costs, whichever is larger, for a currency swing, a price rise from the chef, or a disputed charge. In the example, that's $3,150.
• Track cash against deadlines. Once a month, compare what you've collected with the next bill due.

The Short Version & Yoga Retreat Summary

Price from your costs, size the deposit from your venue contract, time installments to your supplier deadlines and match your terms to theirs. Then your students fund the retreat instead of your credit card, and you get to focus on teaching.