Retreat or Event Hosting
Retreat or event hosting, along with other recreation ventures, include an enormous diversity: adventure tourism, wilderness-based youth therapy, adventure boat cruises or day tours for small parties, festival gigs, and arctic or climbing treks. For more stationary recreation, kids camps centered around drama or sports, and trust-building ropes courses for corporate HR events have been profitable when managed well. Team housing for recreation ventures gives the workforce affordable accommodations. For recreation businesses that function in remote locations, housing prevents costly travel for those who are off-duty.
Groups who have adventurous temperaments and want to create a livelihood for themselves, might consider a recreation business as an option. To accommodate teams for recreation ventures in a remote location ensures their availability for unexpected after-hours needs. Allowing employees to sort themselves into shifts or work groups based on compatibilities revealed by ICmatch profiles can make a tremendous impact on work enjoyment and employee retention.
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Steps to build your own retreat and event center
- Learn the business. You might gain related work experience and attend many events at a variety of retreat and event centers. Try to focus on one type of event so that you and the rest of the staff can get familiar and proficient in the work more quickly.
- Make a team. Add to your leadership team or advisory board others who have familiarity with the hospitality industry and living in intentional community. Use ICmatch.org to build up your core leadership team and other values-aligned volunteers who might start by working in exchange for room and board plus training, as your group levels up. Make sure you have plenty of extroverts on staff who will welcome the constant inflow of new guests.
- Plan it. Create your business plan. You’ll need this for loans, and it will help your team coordinate.
- Fund it. To be eligible for grants, you might team up with non-profits who need fundraising event hosting or their own team-building retreats. You host also free or discounted retreats for grant-supported projects or populations. Identify disadvantaged groups you care about and could include in the client base and on your staff as part of your residential community. One of your team members joining the board of a local nonprofit with a joint goal could help coordinate your efforts; just be upfront about the intention.
- Make it legit. Obtain the professional certifications, permits, licenses, and insurance you need for the hospitality industry.
- Iterate. Don’t wear out your group by taking on too large of events too soon, unless you pair your group members with professional catering staff and event management staff who they can work alongside and learn from.
- Market it. Online marketing includes creating an informative website, social media accounts, and postings on related forums. Local community involvement is sometimes overlooked as an important way to spread the word. You want locals to know you are contributing to your area. Especially in rural areas, you can gain support and help the local economy by hiring locals as extra help for large events. Promote your business with brochures in related businesses and ads in related publications.
Examples
Sahale Retreat Center: run by the Goodenough Community in Washington State, their large rural grounds are ideal for weddings, though they also host and develop educational events
Pumpkin Hollow Retreat Center: run by a theosophical community in New York state, they host workshops and retreats
Zegg Center for Experimental Cultural Design: a seminar centre that has developed and implemented practical models for a socially and ecologically sustainable way of living, integrating personal growth work
Many top retreat centers are run largely by resident staff that functions as an intentional community, even if the organization is more of a business with standard top-down governance; still there’s a lot to learn from centers that have a teaching or social change mission
Consultants for Retreat or Event Hosting
Resources
If you are looking for intentional communities that offer residents work, the page for coliving with cottage industry work teams also has a vocation focus.