What's Inside the Retreat Blueprint? A $5,000 Planning System, Yours Free.
Most people planning a company retreat for the first time have no idea how much professional planning support actually costs. A full-service retreat planning engagement typically runs $30,000 to $100,000 or more. Even the individual components, the planning templates, the vendor relationships, and the execution frameworks, are routinely sold as standalone consulting packages at $3,000 to $5,000 a piece.
The Retreat Blueprint by Select by SONA packages everything you need to plan a world-class retreat into one complete system and gives it to you free when you book your venue through us. Here is exactly what is inside.
1. Expert Venue Sourcing, Anywhere in the World
The search for the right retreat venue is one of the most time-consuming parts of the entire planning process. Most teams spend weeks going down internet rabbit holes, looking at properties that photograph beautifully but don't actually work for groups, don't have the right meeting space, or can't accommodate the room block at a reasonable rate.
Select by SONA finds the right property for your team, your budget, and your goals. No endless research. No guessing. Just the right fit, identified by planners who have placed groups in properties all over the world and know which ones actually deliver.
This isn't a list of options generated by a search engine. It's a curated shortlist built around your specific needs, with properties we have direct relationships with and genuine knowledge of. The difference in quality is significant, and the time you save is even more so.
What You Get: A personalized shortlist of venues that match your team's vibe, goals, group size, and budget — without spending weeks finding them yourself.
2. Contract Negotiation, Handled
Hotel contracts for group retreats are not like booking a room online. They include room block commitments, food and beverage minimums, attrition clauses, cancellation penalties, and a range of terms that can cost you significantly if you don't know what to look for or how to push back.
Select by SONA negotiates on your behalf so you get the best rate possible. You book through us, the hotel pays our commission as IATA-accredited travel agents, and you keep the savings. Our commission does not add a single dollar to your nightly rate. You are simply accessing the same negotiating power that agencies charge tens of thousands of dollars to provide, at no cost to you.
Beyond the rate, we work to improve the contract terms themselves: attrition flexibility, complimentary room ratios, included AV, and reduced F&B minimums where possible. These are the details that protect your budget and your flexibility throughout the planning process.
What You Get: Professional contract negotiation that gets you the best available rate and protects you from the contract terms that catch first-time planners off guard.
3. The Complete Planning System
This is where the Retreat Blueprint earns its $5,000 valuation. Planning a great retreat requires more than a venue and a rough agenda. It requires a system: a framework that tells you what to decide, in what order, with what information, so nothing falls through the cracks and nothing gets done twice.
The complete planning system inside the Retreat Blueprint includes budgeting tools that give you clarity on where your money is going before you commit to anything, agenda planning frameworks that help you design a retreat around outcomes rather than activities, timeline breakdowns that tell you what needs to happen when, and step-by-step execution guides that walk you through every phase from initial planning to post-retreat follow-up.
Everything inside was built from 15 years of planning retreats for companies around the world. It reflects the real decisions planners face, the real mistakes first-timers make, and the real frameworks that produce exceptional results. It is now in your hands.
What You Get: Budgeting tools, agenda frameworks, timeline breakdowns, and step-by-step execution guides. Everything needed to plan a world-class retreat, without hiring a full-service agency to do it for you.
4. Vetted Vendor Contacts in Any Country
The quality of your retreat is only as good as the vendors who deliver it. Ground transport that shows up on time. Caterers who actually know how to feed a group of 80. Facilitators who can hold a room and move a leadership team toward real decisions. These are not things you can reliably find with a Google search in an unfamiliar city or country.
Select by SONA has built relationships with vetted vendors across the world over 15 years of on-the-ground retreat experience. Ground transport in Costa Rica. Caterers in Austin. Facilitators in Portugal. AV teams in Cancun. These relationships exist because we have worked with these vendors, seen them perform, and trusted them with our clients' most important events.
When you book through Select by SONA, you get access to all of it. Not a referral list. A genuine network of trusted contacts who know what group retreats require and consistently deliver.
What You Get: Direct access to vetted vendors across any destination, built from real client engagements rather than directory listings.
5. The Retreat Playbook, for the Planner
The Retreat Playbook is your step-by-step execution guide as the person responsible for making this retreat happen. It tells you what to do, when to do it, and how to make sure nothing falls through the cracks between the moment you confirm a venue and the moment the last person boards their flight home.
Planning a retreat involves a long sequence of decisions and tasks that compound on each other. The Playbook keeps you in front of them rather than behind them. It covers the communication timeline leading into the retreat, the logistics checklist for arrival day, the on-site management framework, and the post-retreat follow-up process that helps you capture the outcomes and make the case for doing it again.
For a first-time planner, the Playbook removes the single biggest source of anxiety in the process: not knowing what you don't know. For an experienced planner, it provides a consistent framework that scales regardless of group size or destination.
What You Get: A complete execution guide that takes you from signed contract to successful retreat, step by step, without having to figure it out as you go.
6. The Retreat Doc, for Your Team
While the Playbook is for you as the planner, the Retreat Doc is for your team. It is a team-facing document that covers everything attendees need to know before they arrive: how to book their travel, what to pack, what to expect from the schedule, and how to show up prepared and excited rather than anxious and uncertain.
The quality of a retreat experience begins before anyone lands. Teams that arrive informed, prepared, and genuinely looking forward to what's ahead engage differently from the first hour. The Retreat Doc is what creates that. It sets the tone, builds anticipation, and handles the logistical questions that would otherwise clog your inbox for the two weeks before departure.
What You Get: A professional, team-facing retreat document that prepares your people to show up ready, so the retreat starts strong from the moment everyone arrives.
7. Pre-Populated Basecamp Project, Ready From Day One
One of the most disorienting parts of planning a retreat for the first time is the feeling of staring at a blank project management board with no idea where to begin. What are all the things that need to happen? What order do they go in? What has already been decided and what still needs to be?
Select by SONA gives you a pre-populated Basecamp project that is set up and ready the moment you sign. All the templates, timelines, and task lists are already built out. You are not starting from scratch. You are stepping into a system that has already organized the work for you, so you can focus on making decisions rather than building infrastructure.
What You Get: A complete, ready-to-use project management setup that eliminates the blank-page problem and gives your planning process structure from day one.
8. Two Coaching Calls With the SONA Team
The tools and frameworks inside the Retreat Blueprint answer most of the questions that come up during retreat planning. But not all of them. Some questions are specific to your group, your destination, your leadership dynamics, or your timeline. Those need a real conversation with someone who has seen every version of this problem and knows how to solve it.
Select by SONA includes two 30-minute coaching calls with our team as part of every engagement. You are not doing this alone. We are in your corner throughout the entire planning process, available to work through the decisions that feel uncertain, pressure-test the choices you have already made, and make sure the retreat you are building is the one your team actually needs.
What You Get: Two expert coaching sessions with the SONA team, available at the moments in the planning process where you need real answers from real planners.
9. Email Support, the Whole Way Through
Questions come up between coaching calls. Vendors go quiet. Contract language gets confusing. A detail surfaces that you are not sure how to handle. Select by SONA provides email support throughout the entire planning process, from the moment you engage to the moment your team comes home.
This is not a ticketing system or a chatbot. It is direct access to the team that sourced your venue, negotiated your contract, and knows your retreat inside and out. Questions come up. We answer them. That is the deal.
What You Get: Responsive email support from the SONA team throughout the entire planning process, so you always have someone to turn to when something comes up.
You're Doing It Yourself. You're Just Not Doing It Alone.
This is the idea that Select by SONA is built on. Full-service retreat planning is powerful, but it is also expensive, and it keeps the most valuable tools and knowledge locked behind a paywall that most companies cannot justify.
Select by SONA changes the model. We source your venue, negotiate your contract, and hand you a complete planning system built from 15 years of world-class retreat experience, all at no cost to you, because we earn our commission directly from the property.
The Retreat Blueprint is valued at $5,000. It is yours free when you book through Select by SONA Events. Because the best retreats shouldn't require a six-figure agency budget to pull off. They just require the right support, at the right moment, from people who have done this before.
💡 Let's Get To Work
Select by SONA gives you expert venue sourcing, contract negotiation, budget management, the complete Retreat Blueprint planning system, vetted vendor access, two coaching calls, and email support throughout the process. All free when you book your venue through us.
The hotel pays our commission. Your nightly rate stays the same. And you walk away with a $5,000 planning system and a retreat your team will actually remember.