Retreat Center Feasibility Study

Independent feasibility studies for wellness retreats, yoga and meditation centers, corporate offsite venues, spiritual retreat centers and lodging-plus-programming resorts, prepared for SBA, USDA and conventional lenders. Part of our glamping and short-term rental feasibility study cluster.

From $4,900, fixed fee. 9 to 16 business days. Rush from 5 business days.

A retreat center sells a package, not a room. Revenue is per person per night, bundled with meals and programming, and arrives through group buyouts, scheduled programmes and corporate bookings rather than through an online travel agency. The operating model carries a full kitchen, event staff and often a spa, which puts cost and staffing closer to a full-service hotel than to a cabin resort, while the lodging inventory may be a mix of lodge rooms, cabins and yurts. Lenders have no hotel benchmark for it. The study builds the revenue model from the comp set's published packages and tests it against the fixed cost of the programme facilities.

The Global Wellness Institute put US wellness tourism at $300.6 billion and 207.5 million trips on 2023 data, within a $2.0 trillion US wellness economy that is 32 percent of the global total; global wellness tourism reached $893.9 billion in 2024, 136 percent of its 2019 level, and is forecast at $1.38 trillion by 2029 at 9.1 percent a year. On the corporate side, a 2025 RetreatsAndVenues survey of 210 companies found an average retreat spend of $3,692 per employee including flights and lodging at companies with 21 to 50 employees; planner pages put typical corporate retreats at $2,000 to $4,000 per person including travel, or $800 to $1,500 per person per day excluding flights. Planner figures carry a commercial interest and the study labels them as such; the operator evidence is that AutoCamp offered group perks for 10 or more rooms a night in summer 2025 and Collective Retreats markets Governors Island for corporate retreats.

Regional demand is documented at county level. Sullivan County, New York traveler spending reached a record $969 million in 2023, up 12.5 percent, and passed $1 billion in total impact in 2024; Catskills visitor spending rose 7.1 percent in 2024 with lodging taking 33 percent and food and beverage 26 percent of New York visitor spending. None of these sources measures group or retreat demand directly, which is why the comp set's package pricing carries the revenue model.

Per-person yield runs from roughly $115 a night (Omega dorm double, weekend) to $799 and above (YO1 packages). That spread is wider than any occupancy range, which is why the study treats positioning as the first sensitivity and occupancy as the second.

SBA. The applicant must be a for-profit business under 13 CFR 120.100; a non-profit retreat center is ineligible, though a for-profit subsidiary may qualify. The lodging component must pass the transient test of more than 50 percent of revenue from stays of 30 days or less with zoning compliance (SOP 50 10 8, Section A, Chapter 1, Paragraph E.3, page 20). A retreat center with a lodge, meeting hall, commercial kitchen and spa is a limited-market property whose layout restricts its use, and a CDC is likely to treat it as special purpose: 504 equity of 15 percent, or 20 percent for a new business, giving a 50/30/20 structure. That floor is a minimum and cannot be restructured downward. The September 10, 2026 25-year debenture priced at 5.41 percent, 6.54 percent effective; bank first liens were quoted at 7 to 9 percent in October 2026; FY2027 504 fees of 0.50 percent upfront and 0.203 percent annual are waived in rural areas. The 504 project is the lodge, hall, kitchen, spa and site work; yurts are weak 504 assets under the 10-year fixed-location rule and belong in 7(a) proceeds or equity.

USDA. Tourist and recreation facilities are eligible under 7 CFR 5001.105(b)(8) where the parcel is rural under 5001.3; a new business building a project and requesting the guarantee before completion needs 25 percent balance sheet equity or 25 percent of project cost under 5001.105(d), so USDA does not lower the equity floor either. Its advantages are a longer real estate term and the FY2026 85 percent guarantee on loans under $5 million with a 3.0 percent fee and 0.55 percent retention fee. Eligibility is checked at parcel level on the USDA Eligibility Map.

Because phasing the yurts barely moves the loan (eight 30-foot yurts with platforms cost roughly $146,000 to $376,000 on manufacturer and cost-guide pricing against a lodge, hall, kitchen and spa), the lever a lender will accept is a funded ramp reserve and equity above the floor, not a smaller unit count.

Zoning. Retreat centers are typically a special use. In Sullivan County, Bethel's Chapter 345 routes special uses through Planning Board review and its comprehensive plan steers resorts to the Rural Development district by special use or planned unit development; Liberty's Chapter 147 applies special use standards and lists a Resort Hotel district. SEQRA review should be expected in New York, and the equivalent environmental review elsewhere.

Health permits. In New York, a lodge for 11 or more guests operating 60 or more hours a year is a Subpart 7-1 temporary residence; a parcel with five or more campsites is a Subpart 7-3 campground, and a camping cabin is a hard-sided shelter under 400 sq ft, so a 30-foot yurt at 706 sq ft falls outside the camping-cabin class and may be code-reviewed as a structure. Four or fewer yurts stay below the campground trigger, which is a permitting reason to phase them even though it is not a financing reason.

Food service and spa. The commercial kitchen carries its own permit and plan review; spa staff licensing is state-specific and is documented for the parcel.

Taxes. Sullivan County rooms carry 8 percent sales tax plus a 5 percent county occupancy tax, shown separately, with a Certificate of Authority from the County Treasurer; New York's Article 12-D STR registry applies only to any dwelling units let through platforms, not to the commercial lodge. The study maps the stack for the parcel's state and county.

Staffing is built from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for the project's own area. For the Central East New York nonmetropolitan area (May 2023), median hourly wages were $16.28 for maids and housekeeping cleaners, $18.17 for restaurant cooks, $20.95 for waiters and waitresses, $21.23 for general maintenance and repair, $16.50 for recreation workers, $24.58 for meeting and event planners and $18.89 for massage therapists; waiter mean wages in that area rose from $16.74 in 2020 to $23.00 in 2023, so wages are trended forward, not held flat. Food and beverage is modelled at departmental cost ratios from published industry sources, and the kitchen's fixed payroll is the first item the downside case tests.

Seasonality is a documented risk: Omega operates only May to October, and New York visitor volume fell 25.7 percent and spending 53.9 percent in 2020. The study reports DSCR for the weakest three consecutive months.

Programme detail: SBA 7(a) and 504 for glamping and cabin resorts and USDA B&I financing for glamping resorts and campgrounds. Adjacent formats: agritourism, farm stay and eco-lodge feasibility, the hotel feasibility study for full-service lodging benchmarks, and the restaurant feasibility study for the F&B component. See where we work.

Prepared by Michal Mohelsky, J.D., FMVA, Practicing Affiliate of the Appraisal Institute. Studies are prepared under USPAP discipline, aligned with SBA SOP 50 10 8.1 and 7 CFR Part 5001, Appendix A to Subpart D. A senior analyst responds to proposal requests within 12 business hours from the firm's San Francisco office at 27 Maiden Lane, Suite 625.