Retreat Booking Guru

Amazing, efficient, easy to use.

Comments: Easy book and retreat set-up as well as group rental management

Pros:

The customer service and it's easy of use. The people at Retreat Guru are all doing a wonderful job and it's always a pleasure to know we have their responsive, competent, friendly support.

Cons:

It could use more pricing features. But that is coming. It's always evolving around user needs and that's why this software only gets better.

Great Retreat Booking Software

Comments: Having retreatants and program participants be able to register and pay online has been something both they and we have wanted for a long time. As soon as it went live, we had people using it and happy to do so. That cut back on the number of phone calls and the time spent on manual registrations done by our staff--a big help to us! People really appreciate being able to register/pay online; it saves them time too. We think our income has increased, but haven't done a complete analysis yet. I'd be surprised if it doesn't show an increase--which is important to us even though we are a nonprofit. Guru has been a big success for us and we are very glad to have found it!

Pros:

It does about 97% of what we want to do with it, an excellent piece of software. I think with feedback from users to developers it should soon do 100% of what we want. It is on the complex side from user's point of view, but what we need done is complex, so that's no surprise. The setup and training is also excellent--we felt we had the undivided attention of the person who worked with us to decide if it was the right software for us, and also of the person who helped us learn it. And they were always nice to us, never impatient : ) They helped us understand how it would interface with our website and also gave us information about Paypal and other payment options for online payments. Not least important is the cost: we thought for years we couldn't afford such software, but this software is the best for our retreat booking purposes and it's relatively inexpensive.

Cons:

Some of the language does not fit *our* retreat ministry, although I'm sure it's perfect for others. In some cases the language could be changed, but in others we just have to live with it. Guru representatives helped us change as much as they could, certainly. Don't know how easy it would be to make changing language more flexible, but that would be helpful to us. One problem that keeps cropping up is that each registration is tied to an i.d. number, so that if someone registers often for our retreats and programs, s/he sometimes ends up with more than one i.d. I think this is something that needs more work in order for it not to be so labor-intensive on the user end.

Well intentioned but the outcome looks like a scam: they're selling spots on full retreats

Comments: Terrible

Pros:

It seems like they have cool retreats, but you can never know if you can trust them.

Cons:

I wanted to book a retreat in Morocco and paid the deposit, thinking it would reserve my spot. I then booked my flights and afterwards received an email telling me that paying the deposit does not confirm your spot because the retreat center might not be available in those dates and recommended not to book my flights until I received confirmation from the retreat center. It turned out those dates were unavailable. How was I supposed to know that paying the deposit does not ensure your spot? How was I supposed to know that those dates were unavailable? I contacted them right away and they say there is a mention of this in the cancellation policies. It's a small paragraph at the bottom of the cancellation policies. This is how they get you. Very deceiving! To sell something you don't have is called scam, wether it was your intention or not.

Highly recommended for any retreat centre

Comments: Exactly what we were hoping for from a retreat hosting software

Pros:

The software is very well thought out and flexible to meet the needs of any retreat centre. Also the team have been extremely helpful and responsive every time we have needed them

Cons:

Possibly greater ability to brand communications to clients in line with our own identity.

Awesome booking system, easy to use and lots of customizable features

Comments: We've been using Booking Guru for our yoga retreat registrations for 6 months and we absolutely love it. It has significantly simplified the registration process for our clients, and we love having everything automated and all the information in one place for easy tracking and reporting. It syncs seamlessly with our online payment system. We love being able to customize and configure questions, emails, coupon codes, pricing, add-on purchases and deposits for each retreat, and the waiting list feature is fantastic and saves us so much time not having to track it all offline in spreadsheets. The customer support team is really helpful and always responds to our questions within a couple of hours. We're thrilled to have found this system!