What Does a Retreat Actually Deliver? An Honest Calculation
Instead of invented percentages: a calculation you can build and defend yourself – including the parts that cannot be quantified.
"What do we get out of it?" is the question every retreat plan eventually meets – usually from the leadership team, usually fair. A retreat for twenty people quickly costs 20,000 francs plus working time.
Search online and you find remarkably precise figures: 25% fewer defects, 30% faster decisions, 40% lower turnover. We spent a long time trying to find the sources. Mostly there are none. The numbers circulate between vendor pages, citing each other.
So no invented percentage here, but something more useful: a calculation you can build yourself and defend internally.
The cost side – in full
The first mistake is counting only the venue invoice. In full, a three-day retreat for twenty people looks roughly like this:
- Accommodation, catering, meeting room: 20 people × 3 nights × CHF 280 = CHF 16,800
- Travel: CHF 100–400 per person depending on origin, here CHF 200 = CHF 4,000
- Activity and materials: CHF 1,500
- Working time: 20 people × 2.5 working days × roughly CHF 500 per day = CHF 25,000
Total: around CHF 47,000 – over half of which is working time. That is the number to argue with, not the 16,800 on the quote.
To work through the cost side for your own setup, the price calculator covers the first item; the rest you have to estimate yourself.
The benefit side – where it gets honest
This is the uncomfortable part, because the benefit of a retreat is real but poorly measurable. Anyone claiming to have quantified it exactly is selling something. What can be said seriously:
The one item that carries the calculation
Turnover. Replacing a skilled employee costs – depending on the role, recruiting effort and ramp-up time – roughly between half and a full annual salary. That is not a study, it is a calculation your HR team can build for your company: recruiting costs plus vacancy time plus onboarding plus lost productivity in the team.
On a salary of CHF 120,000 you quickly land at CHF 60,000 to 120,000 per departure. A single prevented departure carries the entire retreat.
The honest caveat: nobody can prove the retreat specifically prevented that departure. What can be said is that people rarely leave over salary alone, and often over a lack of connection to their team and their work. And connection does not form in video calls.
What you can actually measure yourself
Instead of other people's percentages, collect your own. It costs twenty minutes and makes the next budget conversation easier.
- Before, two weeks ahead: A short anonymous survey. Three to five questions on a 1–10 scale – "I know what others on the team are working on", "I know who to go to about problem X", "I feel connected to my team".
- After, two weeks later: The same questions, word for word.
- After three months: The same questions again. This is the important measurement – it shows whether anything stuck or whether it was a nice trip.
Add a few hard numbers you already have: turnover, sick days, decision lead times. Not as proof, but as context across several retreats.
What a retreat cannot do
This belongs in an honest calculation too:
- A retreat does not repair broken leadership. If anything it makes it more visible.
- A retreat does not substitute for a raise. Underpaid people leave anyway.
- A single retreat does not change a culture. Two a year over three years might.
- A retreat without follow-up evaporates. The week afterwards decides whether it had an effect.
The argument we recommend
Do not present it as a return, present it as insurance. The sentence that works in budget conversations goes roughly like this:
"The retreat costs us around 47,000 francs. A single unplanned departure costs us 60,000 to 120,000. We cannot prove the retreat prevents departures – but we measure before and after, and after three retreats we will know whether it works."
That is less spectacular than "105% ROI", but it survives scrutiny. And that is the difference between an argument that gets through a budget round and one that collapses at the first critical question.
What we can contribute
We have organised group stays since 2007 – by now over 500 groups and more than 10,000 guests. We have no study, but we do have an observation: the teams where it works are the ones that knew beforehand what should come out of it and did something with it afterwards. The place and the food are preconditions, not causes.
If you need a cost side for your specific case, group size and timeframe are enough – you get a proposal with a price within 48 hours. The full cost breakdown, including the items people forget, is in our planning checklist.
