A similar and equally effective, yet simple one-stepper is replacing the incandescent light bulbs in your home or business place with Energy Star rated fluorescent light bulbs. Another small move with a collective larger return.

Our Evolving Culture at All About Retreats

…with an intention to expand and promote healthy growth, we’ve made a shift in the past 6 months concerning NEW MEMBER listing rates. Those of you who own or manage centers or offer retreat programs who have posted listings in that time frame know who you are. What you may not know is that the long term loyal AAR Membership has contributed to making that opportunity possible. For each of them, All About Retreats has a proven track record of providing a return that is far beyond their investment in our company vis a vis their annual renewal fees.

The present influx of NEW centers and retreat programs is vital to All About Retreats’ ability to continue to supply good referrals to ALL AAR Members, because the more our website offers in variety to our visitors who are meeting planners and group facilitators, the easier AAR is to find in natural searches by NEW WEBSITE VISITORS and RETREAT SEEKERS (our market).

The well-being of people who are Retreat Seekers, is nurtured by a good variety of Retreat Programs now gracing AAR’s Retreat pages. Have a look, if you haven’t done so in the past month or two. Even Retreat Diva gets jazzed by the number of innovative opportunities out there!  They exist to make money, yes, but they are also available to help us catch our breath and find the way forward as the winds of change continue to shift and blow from all directions!

Evaluating our business model and seeing clearly that the way forward could be made clear through a few small, simple changes, we realized that we are fostering a Micro Economy in Retreat World. Prosperity is a shared endeavor and in that are the gifts and blessings that no dollar alone can purchase.

Last Words: Value (added) is something you either grok or you don’t, it seems.

At least once a week, Retreat Diva gets the question … usually in the subject line of an email: “Free Listing?” What accompanies the question is a Request for Listing Info that includes a link to a website that is almost predictably very poor, outdated by modern web standards. A badly designed, out of a box presentation of an enterprise that someone would like to promote. This first impression speaks volumes. For the record, here is the standard Retreat Diva reply:

“Thanks for your inquiry. All About Retreats hosts listings for many centers and programs, all of whom find the means to support the efforts AAR makes on behalf of all of our Members. We wouldn’t think of insulting the trust and loyalty that our customers place in our expertise and All About Retreats when they pay for a listing, which brings them an ROI that creates good fortune and fosters mutual goodwill. Integrity in business is worth so much and comes back in many wonderful ways. Good luck.”

We use the word “retreat” as noun, as in a place to “retreat” which is then a verb. Not to belabor the syntax, but it seems from where Retreat Diva sits at her computer, talking to people all over the world about retreats, there is a universal perception that “retreat” no matter how it is conveyed is GOOD FOR YOU!

As generations of people have lived and perished on the planet, there are characteristics that define and drive each successive wave of humanity. Baby boomers, known as the “me” generation, have been driven by self-interest, though many have stepped out of the box and are dedicated to elevating the shared experience of life on the planet. Interest in all beings human and otherwise, is ever more the drive as we age into our wisdom years. True?

Times being what they are, Retreat Diva notes an increase in the number of small retreats that are also offering retreat programs from meditation to wellness to green building. Do we “need” to offer these places and programs because we sense that many people are seeking a “cure”  or antidote to the often toxic effects of living in the world as it has come to be … as we each perceive it?

With no further time to muse, Retreat Diva welcomes comment and conversation.  What DO YOU THINK?

Connecting the people of retreats

All About Retreats serves people with three distinct sets of desires:

1. Those of people who seek relief from their life by retreating OR people who wish to learn more about themselves AND how to relate to others in this crazy old world.

2. The dreams and aspirations of people who facilitate or plan retreats, heart-fully certain that what they have to teach is what the folks above are seeking. This group includes meeting planners who are charged with finding the best bang for the buck when they book a center for a meeting, retreat, workshop, or conference.

3. The desires and needs of retreat center or conference center owners and managers who spend most of their waking hours attracting or servicing the folks in #2, so they can have a place to attract or focus the folks in group #1.

Did I miss anyone?

Retreat Diva welcomes your comments on this blog post. She also invites you to Join All About Retreats OR join our Facebook Fan page and tell us how YOU see it! You don’t have to go it alone! Help everyone connect the dots … AAR helps people find each other!

It happens that plenty of people I meet in passing are happy to return a smile in response to mine.  Not that I am a smiling fool, mind you. But, there is something inside me that wants to connect with folks and I can’t help it.

Sitting at the computer day in and out as we do here at AAR and Feather River Productions, we often feel isolated. Ironically, the internet has evolved to be all about social networking, so AAR has been re-created for easy interactivity, not just for us, but for our website visitors: YOU!

Yep. The All About Retreats website and business has undergone a slow, but important transition in the past 9 months. There were a few setbacks along the way, but  AAR is literally nanoseconds away from realizing it’s propers as THE Retreat and Conference Center Directory (by page and search rankings) on the web. Without belaboring the tech of it, this is what I know:

The most recent AAR website redesign serves THREE primary purposes:

• Make All About Retreats fully interactive so it could expand it’s listing database thereby increasing the volume of it’s offerings to meeting planners
• Re-create each Listing Member’s page as a powerful search friendly entity for relevant keywords on ALL the major search engines
• Create a fresh, visually engaging home page to attract and hold the interest of website visitors, while making their search more streamlined

All the work on the current iteration of AAR is now complete. In fact, technology and our knowledge gained more solid footing, confirming our business choices and affirming the goals we had for the new website. It will now be a matter of time before All About Retreats is among the top 3 for ALL relevant keyword searches on ALL of the major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN.

• Each and every listing page is now properly indexed to stand alone as a well optimized one page website for EVERY LISTING MEMBER on All About Retreats.
• All of the supporting pages are likewise search discoverable and page ranks will organically rise like the tide at the full moon!
• Our Members can log in and edit their Center or Wedding listing at will.
• The home page feature real estate is beautifully displayed
• The traffic that does come is increasing and sticks around longer than ever which translates to good quality, highly convertible visitors to each of our Members

Where Do We go From HERE?

Now, more than ever, we want to hear from you. Won’t you please take a moment? All About Retreats is here for you and your business.

Time has re-defined the nature of All About Retreats as a mother of reinvention and child of Web 2.0. In April, All About Retreats rolled out it’s 8th website iteration giving it a fresh, more Zen appearance.

• The Membership portion is designed to promote spontaneous interaction by those who have either retreat/conference centers or programs to list in the main directories.
• Listing Members can access their listing with a user-friendly self-managed format, updating info, images and posting incentives for groups or individuals.
• Our users have the benefit of a more streamlined pathway to the info they are seeking in a scannable format, just right for web reading.

Such a Deal!

Throughout the summer months, we are promoting new basic listings at low rates to enhance the volume of possibilities for our meeting planners and individuals who are frequent visitors to AAR  and because All About Retreats is about growth, opportunity and supporting our Members in the alternative hospitality business.

People can still call us and ask us to post a listing for them, the rate is a bit higher for our hands-on service and marketing ideas. The good news is that AAR no longer employs a gatekeeper who replies to each and every email request for listing information. Our staff will do a routine review of new listings to be sure they are aligned with the good taste and accurate information that AAR users expect to find.

Comments on the Current State of Meeting Hospitality

AAR is keeping a watch on trends that are emerging in alternative hospitality through chats with our Members. One thing is certain:  our web traffic is much lower than a year ago MOST of the time, with occasional upticks. Go figure! We find no pattern that doesn’t require adding on speculative comment to make it feel better! Things have slowed down and that is what most Members are telling us. HOWEVER…We scan blogs and relevant articles from the mainstream in an effort to harness the ripple effect from big corporations on out to the fringes, where most of our Members live.

If you own or manage a retreat center or conference center … Are you willing to be flexible to fill the rooms and do you still love the business enough to take the ride?

Pause. Relax … Open to new possibilities! Trust the emerging info. Tell the truth and Listen deeply …

The downwardly spiraling economy may actually cause a couple of results that could be positive for the meetings business: airfares likely will decrease and lodging rates will hold relatively steady. Mainstream hospitality prognosticators suggest that all expenses, including meetings are being scruntinized closely.

It’s a great time for you to offer “deals” for last minute group bookings and you can login and use your listing on All About Retreats to tell meeting planners when (and if) that is available upon request.

Retreat and Conference Center Forecasts

There are indications that many venues, particularly small or independently owned centers are receptive to negotiations and concessions for meetings, particularly in cities where demand is lower than it has been in the past. Slowdowns in rate increases across the board but ‘off the beaten path’ locales may become even better bargains as the economy slows and air capacity is reduced. Some cities where lodging rates are falling but air routes have not yet been cut, such as California, may become more popular as meetings destinations.

Some suggest that 2009 will be the lowest occupancy rate for hotels since 1988. The current low was hit in 2002, at 59% occupancy rate, when the SARS epidemic and the Iraq war impacted the travel market already in severe doldrums after 9/11.

A hospitality research President, Mark Woodworth said, “It’s not the depth of the lodging industry recession that concerns us. It is how fast market conditions have weakened, and the rapidly changing outlook for the nation’s economy. Uncertainty is the greatest bugaboo, with resulting volatility. However, with new projects now on hold due to financing issues, projections are that demand will rise again as the economy picks up in 2010.

What About Airfares?

The good news is that an AMEX study found airfares likely to decrease in 2009 but that sadly doesn’t necessarily portend a decrease in prices  as airlines continue their pursuit of expanding the fees charged for services such as in-flight meals and baggage. The study emphasized that ‘corporate-meetings-spend scrutiny, and travel and entertainment spend management in general, will take into account not just the airfare, but all those ancillary air-related fees that can add up to 15 percent of the total air cost — not to mention parking, meals, and other expenses that can add up to $400 per trip on average and can double expenses for some trips.

Drive to … Meetings, Retreats, Weekend Workshops … Preferred??

Whether you are planning a corporate meeting or group retreat, or planning to register for a workshop, you can save money and support the growing model we call: Go Local. It’s not sexy, depending on your location, but to book a venue near home or travel to the less populous venues for retreats, and conferences may draw a larger crowd of partipants, especially when each person is footing their own bill. Unless you are a large conference or convention planner when long-range planning and a healthy following make it lucrative, you can most likely book a great nearby venue within a 45 day (or less) advance of your gathering.

Please add your comments so we can further the flow of current reality to our readers, Members and those who blithely stumble upon the ramblings of Retreat Insider!

To paraphrase from Nickens’ inspiring article: Retailers are betting that a direct-mail deluge will badger us into buying more stuff annually and clog our mailboxes with some 20 billion catalogs. Where does all that paper come from? Much of it is pulped from Canada’s boreal forest, the greatest wilderness on the North American continent, a 1.3 billion-acre forest stretching from New Foundland to the Yukon …

Reading the article spurred us to take action:

1. We signed up in support of Forest Ethics Initiative Do Not Mail
2. When a retail catalog arrives, we call the company on their nickel and demand to be removed from their mailing list.

Get hip about the precious boreal forest at Audubon.org

JUST one more thing …

This week, I decided NOT to do business with a company that is named after the ancient Greek word for earth, “Gaia”. My husband purchased one of their yoga products and a gift certificate online in January. In less than two weeks, I received a paper gift certificate by snail mail and the equivalent of two and a half of their catalogs printed on paper, much of which to tell me how earth friendly their company is. Sheesh! I finally called the company to request a credit for the cost of the gift certificate and told the poor CS person, mindful of his hourly employee status, that I would not ever purchase from their would be earth friendly company.

NOW for the BIG surprise, I promised

Today, it arrived by email: An invitation to attend the Sustainability Event of the Year produced by the Green Meeting Industry Council. Skeptical, but intrigued, I looked into it, wondering where in Pittsburgh a “green meeting” organization could host this huge event! Let’s look at this with a clear mind: In the end, the fact that most anything we do in the world, including travel to meetings may or may not net out as a low carbon footprint.

Tossing my haughty cynicism aside, I am here to report that I am impressed at the thoughtful planning the GMIC folk have done to keep nearly every facet of the two day meeting in line with their green values!

The Venue

David L. Lawrence Convention Center is the largest Gold LEED certified green convention center in the USA and the first of its kind in the world. The designation is awarded by the United States Green Building Council through its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. The Council found that green is as intrinsic to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center as is its world-class aesthetics and engineering.

The center is committed to recycling and conservation and just by booking or attending an event there you are participating in the latest green practices.

GREENING Participants: SpaceShare

GMIC set up the SpaceShare program to cover three areas that will reduce the environmental impact of participants at their convention:

• Search for a carpool. If you have a half-full car or cab, our search simultaneously looks for passengers to fill it OR offers you options to get in on a ride so that you don’t have to rent a car or pay for cab fare alone.
• Coming into town by plane, train or bus? See who else is leaving from your city. Perhaps you can fly together, or meet someone at the airport on arrival to share a taxi.
• Find a hotel roommate.

Are you inspired yet?

Every All About Retreats member has a smaller property to manage than the mega convention center in the heart of Pittsburgh. Each member is serving a significantly smaller number of people per group meeting, too. But, that’s just a beginning. With a passion to make a green difference and a little innovation, each of us, regardless of our business type, can reduce costs, positively impacting our bottom line and doing our bit for Gaia …

I rest my case… for now.

Love you and love our Mother …

dawna

Tina and I visit on the telephone periodically and this year, we spoke about the nature of their business and the effects of the flagging US economy. Tina shared that she recently attended a big meeting of their site directors, many of whom have been in this business for over 25 years. Curious how they were riding the recession, I inquired and this is what I learned:

• UCCR properties are mostly camp type properties that are well managed, reasonably priced and serve a variety of non-profit and church type groups. These tend to ride recessionary economies really well.
• Their “portfolio” of properties is diversified by location, type and style, so they tend to be appealing to the larger retreat and group meeting hospitality market all the time

The images on the right side of this page are 2 of the 13 retreat venues that have gotten excellent referral and conversion traffic from All About Retreats over the past several years. We have just added three more properties to our California pages. The photo below right is one of them.

UCCR publishes an eNewsletter on a regular basis. It helps their business to keep in touch with customer groups and provide them with some food for thought. Here are excerpts from a recent edition.

Team Building: Retreat Opportunities & Ideas For Your Organization Your OrganizationThe Top Five Reasons to Take Your Group On Retreat

1. Disconnect: For us 21st-century folks, unplugging from the TV, computer, phone, and fax machines is necessary for creating a healthy, happy life. It has become an imperative to the pursuit of the inner, creative life to disconnect periodically.

2. Connect: Retreats provide an opportunity to connect with one’s self and with one another. In fact, it is most likely the first comment people will make about their group’s retreat…”I really got to know the others in my group.”

3. Community & Team Building: If team building is one of your community’s goals, going on retreat together can really help make it happen. Eating meals together, walking and playing together, singing and sharing a space with one another helps create deeper relationships among your group members.

4. Accomplish Goals: Being on retreat allows your group to be free of typical distractions in order to focus more fully on the tasks at hand. Be intentional about your time together to achieve your objectives.

5. Rest & Relaxation: Make sure to allow for some real R & R during your retreat. It’s easy to over-schedule participants. Give extra time after lunch for a walk in the woods or a game of volleyball. If you really want to spoil them, give them a nap time… we all really appreciate the permission to rest body and mind!

So, there you have it … plant seeds now, harvest fruit later! It works!

Without a doubt, there are more church affiliate retreat and conference centers on All About Retreats than ever. A close second are the camp-style venues. The managers and staff at these places are telling us that their bookings are good and that more groups are contacting (and booking!) them because of their low cost relative to the larger meeting hospitality market. Some of these venues are modest in their amenities and accommodations, others are slightly more refined and upscale.

GOOD NEWS

If you are marketing or managing a church affiliated non-profit retreat … All About Retreats is a GREAT place for you to list your facilities. Here’s why:

• All About Retreats is getting a record number of telephone calls from church groups seeking venues within a 2 hour drive of their church. They have about $80 to $100 per person per day to spend for their retreat .. FOOD and LODGING and MEETING FACILITIES.
• We are seeing a bit of a trend developing which we are loosely convinced is a direct result of these profoundly uncertain times, which apparently motivates people to go back TO CHURCH … and deepen their faith by participating in a weekend church retreat.
• Church retreat groups seem to be a really solid ongoing business opportunity IF your center is priced attractively for their modest budgets.
• Our Member grapevine discloses that camp-style venues are seeing solid business from youth and church groups, while their more upscale counterparts have seen a decline in business, particularly corporate groups, who are slicing and dicing off-site meeting budgets.

What to do?

We invite fresh ideas and stories from those of you who own, manage or market residential retreat and conference centers. So, post a comment, sharing your solutions and problems with others in the meeting hospitality bizz!

We also encourage those of you among our email community who are sitting on the fence about listing on All About Retreats to contact us for a sensible rate and get on board! There is plenty of business to go around!

Where to begin?

I have three resources to offer you. The first is written by world-renowned intuitive and respected lecturer in the field of health, intuition and contemporary spirituality, Caroline Myss. It is her Thanksgiving Message: A Much Needed Injection of Hope. With each pass through it, I deepen my understanding of what I can do to turn chaos into opportunity. Here are some excerpts …

“No one is untouched by these changes, and from that perspective we are being drawn together in uncharted waters. …So, how do we interpret this? Where do we begin? …This has all the “experts” scrambling – and if I’m not mistaken, it was also experts who got us into this mess. Or was it? Perhaps the greater truth – the cosmic truth, as it were, is that this period of chaos was always scheduled to happen…

…The reason you study spiritual and mystical literature is so that you can learn to “reason like a mystic” and apply that skill precisely in times like this, so that when difficult crises arise your response is not, “What have I done wrong?” but, “Ah, so change is constant.” So let’s “reason like a mystic” as we examine the chaos in the world around us…let us look through the lens of mystical law, those laws which govern the collective field of energy and the collective soul of humanity. This is where you need to cast your attention to “see clearly,” not on the piles of mess on the earth. Once a system has collapsed or is screaming for help, its energies are already exhausted. The first step in learning to reason like a mystic is to understand what “has” to happen, because of the level of psychic free radicals in the collective consciousness. READ MORE

How to Cultivate Holiday Compassion for Your Family
by Robert Ohotto, Intuitive Astrologer

You think you’ve really grown, changed, evolved, and can rise above the old family patterns, but when holiday visiting begins, remember what spiritual teacher Ram Dass once said, ‘If you think you’re enlightened, spend a weekend with your parents.’ Well, friends, you’re not alone … and Robert Ohotto, Intuitive Astrologer, is right there with us. If you grok family systems and value your sanity, you’ll find Robert’s article of great solace and it is essential reading BEFORE the family visits begin! Robert offers experience based insight and the article is laced with his playful good humor. When it arrived in my email, I immediately printed it and have been in study mode, re-membering the art and wisdom of cultivating …”authentic compassion that will allow me to transform some of that Family Fate into Family Destiny!” READ Robert’s ARTICLE

Are you ready to be a student? No time like the PRESENT, to begin!

I can read and recommend wise teachers and their articles all day long, but at the end of the day, I am still alone with my thinking process and sometimes, cleaning up the consequences of my unskillfulness. The truth is that being in balance requires diligent, wise effort. Balance is grounded in values, principles, following a spiritual or wisdom path. At some point in your life, you may choose a teacher to help you find the path again and again.

James and I have been fortunate this year to become students of a wise, compassionate mindfulness teacher, Ferris Buck Urbanowski, who is a resident of the Mad River Valley in Vermont, where we live. Ferris is known internationally and has taught mindfulness meditation since 1980. From 1992 to 2001, she was a senior teacher at The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the UMass Memorial Medical Center, teaching in the Stress Reduction Clinic.

The foundation mindfulness meditation (or stress reduction) classes that Ferris teaches include a few easy to follow CD’s that are available for purchase on her website. If you are beginning or re-vitalizing a sitting meditation practice and want some support and guidance, you can outfit yourself with the CD’s for about $30. Even with our experience in various meditation centers, teachers, settings and retreats, James and I have found that Ferris’ teaching and the CD’s give us a structure and provide invaluable support and practical wisdom, which help us to stay in practice. This makes all the difference in the results we’ve achieved and yes … I believe we are more balanced and better equipped to recognize chaos when it arrives and to turn it into golden opportunities!

Even as the downturn of our economy has made a noticeable impact on some meeting hospitality venues, others are well-positioned and enjoying level, and even increased business activity compared to recent years!

What are the factors that can make the difference??

Here is what we hear from our members:

Facilities, Amenities and Geography

1. Camp-style retreat and conference centers (50 to 1000 guests, at least two seasons a year) are seeing an increase in business in the Eastern US and the Western and Southwestern states, level in the Southeast and Mid-West where church group business is high. Attributes: Relative low cost versus other choices for large groups; expansive natural setting and a wide array of facilities.

2. Small venues (from 8 to 20 guests) are generally healthy across the US (except Hawaii) IF their marketing is diversified among portals and directories that include:

• Vacation Home Rentals
• Weddings and Family Gatherings
• Retreats
• Directories and influence that draw Corporate Meetings

Attributes: 8 to 12 guests lodge in private room with bath; facilities include a dedicated meeting space AND a private chef provides excellent cuisine; diverse revenue sources; customer that expects to pay more AND gets what they pay for; corporate groups who are willing to pay for privacy, service, service and service.

3. Mid size venues (30 to 60 guests) are turning in mixed reviews across the US

AAR members whose websites were developed by our parent company, Feather River Productions, LLC recently asked us to explain website traffic stats which show All About Retreats as a referring domain. ALL AAR members will find at least some traffic under referring domains that is credited to All About Retreats … but the info does not give a complete picture!

Our Webmaster, James Foreman, reviewed FRP client stats as well as AAR’s stats. Here is what he discovered, which may shed light on all of our Members’ web stat interpretations:

1. Keeping in mind that the website visitors coming from AAR to each Member’s site normally only see your listing page ( i.e. http://allaboutretreats.com/centers/massachusetts.html), then visit the AAR home page. This is because when there is a search on Google, we have indexed for local natural search keywords. Unless they are web savvy or know the crumb trail they followed, visitors do not know that they came to your site through All About Retreats
2. Our company name is not in the title of the state or region page, which is the title that a person reads when they view our link on Google, Yahoo etc. When people complete your contact form they may not know which site they found you on, especially in relation to All About Retreats. We will be changing this soon (see below).
3. In looking at our client stats and AAR’s stats (Google Analytics), AAR consistently sends visitors to ALL member websites. We suggest that you look at your Google stats on a regular basis and view the referring domains aspect of your stats to see how many clicks you have been getting over a period of a year or so. In 2008, AAR is among the 5 highest referrers from a website that is not a search engine for many AAR Members and our website clients.
4. Further, you will see in your stats that on average people who come to your site from AAR, stay on your webiste, viewing 3 to 5 pages, which is a healthy indicator of interest in your site, your center and what you have to offer.
5. In addition, this time of year is the slowest time for booking retreats across the board. This changes considerably after the new year begins. We hear about conversion slow downs every year at this time, and are working to increase our exposure to areas beyond retreats so that this is alleviated through diversification and an advanced search market strategy.
6. Conclusion: Though we have branded All About Retreats, we focus more energy on branding our advertising Members, not reminding web surfers what site they’re on. This appears to be a negative if a company relies on hearing about referrals from those emailing or calling you rather than reading and knowing how ti interpret your own web statistics.
7. Finally, notice how many times people DO NOT answer your contact form question about where they heard about you. Is your office staff inquiring about referral source? Are you?

GOOD NEWS FOR AAR MEMBERS:

Within the month of November, All About Retreats will launch it’s 9th iteration with some powerful new features and benefits to our Members. AAR will leave similar directory websites in the dust with our new services, and give more control to our listing Members in viewing their clicks, content and all else.

So, if you’re thinking about joining the AAR community … stop thinking and just do it! About 80% of our Members are are long-term loyal customers to whom we are grateful for continuing confidence and support! Get your sustainable business infrastructure in place and get ready for 2009!