Global Retreat Trends versus The view from the French Retreat

As we start to plan 2026 and are in the final third of our season, we are reading the feedback, noting the food trends, planning new menus and adapting our offerings. We had 20 retreats booked for 2025. Of those 9 were for yoga, 2 self-development, 1 music (Richard Durrant who has booked for 10 years in a row) , 1 Mandala art, 1 Creative writing, 1 Menopause, 1 Pilates, 1 a mix of mediation, yoga and Pilates. We also welcomed our first celebrity yoga teacher Kirstin McGee, who pioneered the launch of Peloton’s yoga and pilates programme. (The guests had to explain who she was to us!)

Although we are being told that for Millennials and Gen Z, wellness is no longer seen as an occasional indulgence or set of one-off activities but as an ongoing part of daily life and that these younger groups are driving much of the growth, the majority of our guests continue to be women over 50. Nonethelesss in May we had two millennial yoga teachers from the US lead a sell out retreat, just one of 8 or 9 they were offering this year! Their promotional materials were gorgeous, their website beautiful and their instagram filled with enticing imagery. Nonetheless with higher levels of disposable income, the community it offers and the friendship for solo travellers,  wellness retreats really do seem to be the new (older) girls’ holiday.

In 2020, the ghastly year when we were all shut down (mercifully not for ever, as we feared at the time) we had 3 artists retreats booked. To our surprise they took the longest to emerge from the pandemic and it wasn’t until this year that we hosted another painting retreat. The host filmed a beautiful video which you can see here and shows the French Retreat in all its June glory. For anyone who hasn’t been here for a few years check out how much has changed since your last visit!

For many years menopause was spoken about only in whispers, often referred to simply as “the change.” More recently  the subject has moved firmly into the public eye. High-profile conversations, from Davina McCall to Oprah’s Menopause Talk with Drew Barrymore and Maria Shriver, have helped bring it into mainstream awareness. The French Retreat had our first conversation with a menopause retreat facilitator in 2022 but the trend is waning here, and we have no menopause retreats yet booked for 2026.

Oprah did us a great favour by doing a show on the Hoffman Process. As many of you know Matthew was a Hoffman teacher and we have run Hoffman retreats here in French and English for a number of years. Following Matthew’s untimely death last November both organisations have been hugely supportive, for which I am profoundly grateful. It has been a challenge to remain upbeat this year, but I have been supported by my wonderful team. Julie continues to be a ray of sunshine, Leigh has been producing some fabulous food, and we have been re-joined by Jo who worked here back when we opened in 2015. Our youngest child, who is now 19, has worked in the kitchen all summer but is shortly off to university in Edinburgh, and possibly due to the influence of all the conversations we had with all the lovely facilitators who have passed though their home, is going to read Philosophy.  In other news I have had a book commission to write about spirituality and healing in nature, which will be published next May so that has been keeping me busy too. I have to submit it by the end of September so if you have any friends and colleagues leading nature based therapies and retreats do tell them to get in touch so I can feature them.

Opportunities for free publicity for shamanic practitioners!

Whilst there has been lots of changes here, one thing that hasn’t moved is our prices which we have managed to hold for 4 years. We know the sweet spot for booking a retreat is the week between Christmas and New Year so we like to have our website ready to launch in November, so now is the time to make plans. The most popular 2026 dates are starting to fill, meaning our 2026 availability is: Easter weekend and April; 1-8 May; 9-18 June; 14-21 July; 31 Aug - 8 Sept and 24 Sept-1 October. If you are thinking about running another retreat in France, or just anyway, I’d love to have a chat. You book it in here.