5 things to consider when hosting your yoga retreat

Have you been dreaming of leading your own yoga retreat?  It can be an awesome experience. Organizing a yoga retreat, however, can be overwhelming.  Beyond planning and teaching your classes, you’re responsible for choosing and booking a venue, planning the agenda, marketing, and more. You want to offer your students the best, but may not have a clue how to go about it. Planning a successful retreat is about designing an experience.  Think about what you’d like to participate in if you were the one looking to join in on a retreat, visualize each day. Here are a few pointers to help you focused on some main ideas that need attention.


Step 1: Create the "to do" list.
Before you plan, take a moment or two to contemplate the kind of experiences you want to give to your participants. Put pencil to paper on what you can see your group enjoying and where. This helps you stay focused.  Where do you want to go? What factors are important to you? 
You can relate to your people and know what they want and like.  They probably like many similar things.  If you haven’t approached your students yet, do so now by planting the seed of a retreat and ask them a few questions.  What does a day at the perfect yoga retreat look like to you?   What sites would you like to see?  The conversation will unfold from there.  

Step 2: Choose your location.
Location is one of the biggest considerations for people interested in going on a yoga retreat. The options are truly endless but Costa Rica is known for yoga and nature! It's not by accident that one of the largest yogic centered retreat (Envision Festival) takes place in Uvita and they just celebrated their 10th anniversary!  Yoga Maya Uvita is prepared to assist you in your retreats by hooking you up with our fab connections, planning assistance, and more, from whale watching to ATV jungle excursions, you can count on Uvita for the best experience possible.
We have an 8 x 6 meter teak wood floored open air yoga shala with many yoga props. We have great wall space too.  The shala overlooks the 50 foot long pool and the entire facility is very peaceful.  

Step 3: Do your math.
Before determining your prices, consider any additional costs, such as paid advertising, travel expenses, and extras you plan on offering, if any.  Ideally, your prices should cover your costs and leave you with a profit.  One way to determine your pricing is to add a fee to the cost per student. For example, if you’re teaching five classes on your retreat and you charge each student $20 per class, you would add a $100 fee to your cost per student. Consider your students’ expenses. How much does it cost to travel to my retreat? How much time off work will people need to take? How much will they need to budget for food, activities, or excursions or are these included? I also look at how much other retreats are charging for a similar format.  One popular venue is listed on the link below to see what's going on with the yoga retreat competition.


Step 4: Plan the days of the retreat.
Once you have the logistics figured out, You should start planning each day. What kind of experience are you hoping to offer your students? Is there a theme to your retreat?  What could they need that may not be readily available?  Retreats need not have every minute planned with an event, so be sure to leave enough free time in for spontaneity and other excursions like massages or shopping. 

Step 5: Start Marketing.
Marketing doesn’t just happen.  Genuine enthusiasm is contagious, word of mouth goes a long way so ask your people to spread the word.  It’s organic marketing. Don’t be shy about it.Depending on your target market you may want to pay for adds on Facebook and/or Instagram.  Google is a great way to spread the word also if you want to open it up for others to attend.  Make sure you have a google business account and start learning SEO tactics, it comes in handy when marketing online.

This sums up a few basics on retreat planning.  There are a lot of details and things to think about and we hope this sort list will put things in action for your retreat!  We are here for you.  We are working hard at Yoga Maya Uvita and will gladly spend some time helping you figure out the costs of a retreat here with us.  Whether it’s your 1st or 51st, we can coordinate events with local venues and advise what to see and do while here.  For example a horseback riding yoga waterfall tour!  Our location in Uvita is the closest retreat center to the Whale’s Tail National Park so getting around couldn’t be easier.  


With so many things to do in the area you can rest easy that your guests will enjoy every day in the Southern Pacific Zone of beautiful Costa Rica.  Pura Vida.

Book Yoga Retreats is a popular advertising venue, they take a minimum of 14% Check them out