Victoria’s Best Yoga Retreats
So here’s a horrid little secret. When you google ‘Best Wellness Retreats Victoria’ or ‘Best Yoga Retreats Victoria’ or ‘Most affordable yoga retreats Victoria’ etc you are sponsoring an industry that takes 15-20% of the cost of your retreat in commission, often plus a currency transfer fees, and then don’t pay your retreat fees until after you have already attended.
What is sad, is that permanent retreat venues can’t afford not to list with these sites - because they buy google’s top advertising spots, have SEO rankings that we struggle to achieve (we need to actually talk about what we offer - rather than just listing yoga retreat after yoga retreat, wellness retreat after wellness retreat etc) and usually offer a worse cancellation/refund policy than you would get if you booked direct.
Or then there’s the sites that don’t even pretend to list Yoga retreats. They just list expensive hotels, RACV clubs and resorts under the title of Victoria’s best Yoga retreats (yes I’m talking about you trip101). And if you’re not sure what a Yoga retreat is then check out this post entitled What is a Yoga retreat.
But before I step off my soap box … one more thing. And this isn’t sour grapes as we’re on many of those lists. Being listed in one of these ‘Victoria’s Best’ lists means absolutely nothing about the quality, value or experience you will have at that venue.
So do your own research. Look for the best and worst things that people have said on the Internet and Social media, knowing that there will always be someone who won’t be happy, no matter what and questioning if things sound a little too one sided.
If you’ve got questions, ring or message the retreat themselves and let them talk you through things. We’ve told people that we don’t think we’re the right retreat for them (those perhaps more suited to the Golden Door or Eden Health retreats - which are both fabulous, but a completely different price tag and offerings to us here), or we’ve been able to clarify if there’s any confusion on what we offer. I’m proud to say that the yoga retreat operators I know, will answer your queries with honesty and integrity.
Last thing. Where you can, book direct with a retreat - because there is no industry that can soak up 20%+ commission fees without needing to charge for it somewhere. And we’d really, truly, honestly rather not pay it to some large faceless international corporation at the expense of your wellness.
As a bonus, here are some of Victoria’s best independent yoga retreats that I know of, plus a great place to get an idea of what’s on offer here in Victoria in both the Yoga and Wellness Retreat space:
Grampions; Iyenga Yoga Retreats - https://www.griffinshill.com.au/yoga-retreats#/events
Kyneton; Ayevedic Yoga & Massage Retreats - https://www.aligninghealthretreatdayspa.com/
Grampions: Traditional Yoga & Meditation Ashram experience - https://www.kailash.co/
Australian Retreats (including independant instructor retreats): https://retreatmehappy.com
