Intro to offsite budgets
Intro to offsite budgets
BoomPop Team · 9/26/2022
Offsites and retreats can come with a significant price tag, but it’s an investment in connection that always pays off. Deciding just how big that investment should be is a complex question—and how budgets are set varies widely across different organizations.
In many cases, organizers are given a per person or total budget and left to allocate it themselves. This can be overwhelming at first, but that’s why we recommend making your budget after you’ve created goals for your event. If you can refer back to the goals of your event and precisely what you want to accomplish, it becomes much simpler to decide how items on your budget will be prioritized.
When making decisions about allocation, there are four core areas you’ll need to consider: accommodations, dining, activities, and travel. Travel tends to be the most inflexible of these four, so it’s best to quickly create an estimate based on where your attendees are traveling from, then set that money aside.
With the remainder of your budget, you’ll have to strike a balance between the remaining three areas of accommodation, dining, and activities. In some cases, coworking space will be another added consideration.
Accommodation generally requires the highest portion of all these areas, with activities second, and dining third. That depends greatly, however, on the goals of your event and the interests of your attendees. Some activities may be free, while some dining experiences may be quite expensive. It all varies based on your own agenda.
To help give you an idea of how a budget can take shape, let’s look at some estimated budgets we’ve based on actual events (not including travel expenses):
California getaway
Mendocino County, California
80 person company offsite
4 nights
$1,000 per person / $80,000 total
NYC adventure
New York City, New York
20 person team retreat
3 nights
$1,925 per person / $38,500 total
Miami retreat
Miami, Florida
20 person corporate offsite
3 nights
$1,325 per person / $26,500 total
Los Angeles offsite
Santa Monica, California
10 person executive retreat
2 nights
$1,000 per person / $10,000 total
Each of the events listed above included a healthy combination of dining, activities, and quality accommodations.
However, differences in each event made significant impacts on the budget. The Los Angeles offsite above, for example, is still $1,000 per person even though it was only two nights because of the high-end accommodations that were selected.
That’s why when it comes to budgeting, the most important thing to keep in mind is that aside from basic essentials like travel, the bulk of your spend should be oriented towards catering to what will make the experience best for your unique group of attendees. Every event is different—so budgets often need to be as well.
How are organizations setting their offsite budgets?
For further insight, here are the responses from our survey of offsite organizers on the budget size of their most recent event.
What was the total budget of the most recent in-person offsite or retreat you planned or helped plan?
$10,000 - 44.2%
$10,000-$30,000 - 24.2%
$30,000-$50,000 - 12.5%
$50,000-$100,000 - 7.5%
$100,000-$200,000 - 5%
$200,000 or more - 6.7%
Start planning
Have more questions on budgeting, planning, or other parts of your next offsite? Get in touch with our event experts.
Featured resources
8 Steps for Planning Your Company Retreat
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