The author
Jimenez Julien, the person behind RetreatSeats
I build and maintain the roster that retreat hosts use to fill beds, stage deposits and keep waivers in order. My name is on the product, the invoices and the support inbox.
Why I built a roster instead of a booking form
RetreatSeats started with a phone call in February 2021. A host in Vermont had sold eleven of twelve places for a five night retreat and could not tell me, without opening four browser tabs, which of those eleven women had paid in full. Her booking form counted tickets. Her bank counted transfers. Her waivers were in a shared drive. Her cook had a text message with three allergies in it. Every one of those tools worked. Together they told her nothing.
I spent that spring sitting in on the boring part of the retreat business: the six weeks before guests arrive. I watched hosts retype the same names four times, chase balances at eleven at night, and discover on arrival day that the woman who booked a share had assumed she was getting a single. The pattern was always the same. The retreat itself was designed with enormous care. The administration around it was held together by memory and goodwill.
So the first thing RetreatSeats got right was the unit. A place is not a ticket, it is a bed in a room in a specific house. Once the software knows that, a whole family of problems disappears: the same twin cannot be sold twice, the single supplement stops being guesswork, and a host can see at a glance that the revenue gap in her session is two unsold singles rather than a vague feeling that the numbers are short.
What I learned about this trade
Three things, and I have been wrong about all of them at least once. First, retreat hosts are not underorganized. They are running a hospitality business, a teaching practice and a duty of care with the staffing level of a sole trader, and they have usually built a system that works right up to the point where it does not scale. Second, the money conversation is the one they most want handled by something other than their own voice. A reminder that arrives on their letterhead with an exact figure is easier for everyone than a third apologetic email. Third, the paperwork is not bureaucracy. A signed waiver and an accurate allergy list are the difference between a good week and a call to an insurer.
I also learned to stop shipping features that look impressive in a demo. Hosts do not want dashboards. They want a printed key sheet that their assistant can carry to the door, and they want the roster to be right.
How I work with hosts
Every demo is run by me or by someone who has watched at least twenty of them. We build your actual venue on the call, with its odd annex and its bathroom that two rooms share, and we place two or three of your real guests on it. If your season is already half sold, we import it and reconcile the payments together rather than handing you an import wizard and wishing you luck.
After that I stay reachable. Support requests come to a human, not a ticket queue with a deflection target. During the September and January registration peaks I answer on weekends, because that is when hosts are actually at the kitchen table doing this work.
Experience and expertise
I have spent fifteen years building software for small operators, most of it for businesses where one person holds the whole schedule in her head. Before RetreatSeats I worked on booking and scheduling tools for independent venues, which is where I first saw how badly generic ticketing maps onto a house with named rooms. I run MLJ, SASU, the French company that publishes this product, and I am responsible for its finances, its data handling and its roadmap.
I am not a retreat facilitator and I do not pretend to be. My expertise is in the operational spine: allocation logic, payment schedules, consent records and the reporting that tells you what a session actually earned. The retreat itself is your craft, and the product is deliberately quiet about it.
How this product is built and maintained
RetreatSeats ships small changes weekly and larger ones between seasons, because nobody wants a redesign in the week their guests arrive. Every feature starts as a written problem statement from a named host, and it does not ship until at least three hosts running different formats have used it on a live session. Copy on this site is reviewed by me and checked against what the product actually does today. If a claim on this page stops being true, it comes off the page.
Data handling is written down and audited once a year. Guest records live encrypted in United States data centers, role restrictions keep health notes away from check in logins, and retention windows are set by the host rather than by us. Pricing is published in full on the home page: $49, $129 and $259 per month, billed monthly, cancellable at any time. There is no per guest fee and we take no percentage of the money your guests pay you.
Published articles
These nine notes make up The Retreat Roster, the magazine I write for hosts who fill retreat houses for a living, and each one answers a question a host put to me directly.
- How do I actually price a five day residential retreat so it covers my costs and pays me?
- What should my retreat cancellation and refund policy say if a guest drops out three weeks before?
- Do I need my own liability insurance for a retreat if the venue already carries a policy?
- Is a signed waiver enough to protect me, or do I need a health intake form as well?
- Should I rent a whole venue or book a block of rooms for my first twelve person retreat?
- How far ahead should I open registration, and when do the deposits usually land?
- What does it take to feed twelve women with five different dietary needs for a week?
- What has to be sorted before my guests arrive if I want a calm check in day?
- Are women only retreats still filling, and what are hosts changing about length and price?
Contact the author
Write to jimenezjulien42@gmail.com with your venue, your bed count and the date you open registration. I answer within one business day, usually the same morning. If you would rather see the roster than read about it, book a demo from the contact section of the home page.