Transparency with our community has been our mantra since we started Soltara Healing Center. Our dreams of bringing the sea, mountains, and jungle together with the medicine were something we all diligently worked to create. Our dedication was worth every second because the work that we are doing at the center truly makes a positive impact on so many people’s lives, including our own. Here at Soltara, we are consistently balancing accessibility for those who authentically do not have the means to be able to pay for their services while also running centers with 30+ staff members. This is why we have decided to give back to our community by opening up a scholarship program for those who genuinely do not have the means to participate in a retreat but need the healing. Having dedicated scholarship spots allows us to make medicine a bit more accessible while remaining in good financial health and sustainability to continue to share this medicine with others; If you are interested in donating to the scholarship program to facilitate a retreat for someone please donate via this page.
Soltara has received some inquiries about finances and questions about our costs and since our mantra is transparency with our community we decided to write this blog post breaking down our operations and costs with you! When we first opened in 2018, we delved into educating ourselves about procedures, costs and business customs of Costa Rica, which are quite different than in Peru. During this learning phase, we’ve had to raise our prices to accommodate for increasing service levels and the quality and number of staff, along with their benefits. Our prices reflect the costs of operations and the value of the services that we’re delivering!
With intimate knowledge of our operational expenses with several years of learning, experimentation, and experience, we now know our optimal guest capacity and how much revenue we need to generate with that capacity to continue to offer the services we provide. We’d like to break down our pricing system so interested parties can understand where their money goes and how our expenses are broken down. In the interest of doing this, we have broken our pricing into two parts; the professional and medicine services, plus the typical hotel services.
The hotel services are your typical check-in, housekeeping, concierge services, and a price per room which reflects comparably what other beachfront hotels at a similar tier of quality in the area, or really in any developed country, are charging. We charge market value for the style and quality of accommodations, and that price is apart from our professional and medicine services. This can range based on which Soltara location and accommodation type you choose, and is listed as a separate Lodging item on your invoice.
In addition to the per night hotel fee, we charge a flat rate of $2500 – $2750 per person (for the 5 and 7 night retreats; $4250 for the 12-night retreat), for our professional and medicine services that come in addition to the hotel services. Those professional and medicine services include:
- The communication department which performs all guest communication and spends a large amount of time answering questions, coaching, and processing concerns.
- The intake process which requires individual analysis of each guest intake questionnaire and passing them on to psychological and medical professionals in the event of any potential conflicts or contraindications.
- Our integration and aftercare program which supports guests after their retreat, including our integration & community platform, regular live events across the fields of holistic healing, three months of weekly resources, a wealth of educational content & courses to meet you wherever you are in your journey, a network of practitioners, teachers, and organizations to connect with for further support, and monthly virtual preparation & integration circles
- The sourcing and preparation of all meals for guests, crafted specifically for working with ayahuasca, including the costs of organic, locally sourced food services – we always purchase from local farmers before thinking about purchasing from chain stores.
- The logistical coordination which goes into helping guests plan their process, including the preparatory information which has been carefully created in collaboration with psychotherapists
- Logistics of sourcing and making ayahuasca medicine
- Logistics of getting staff and healers from the Amazon to our center
- Some of the highest wages in the field of ayahuasca retreat centers for our on-site staff as we wish to have the most professional, talented, and experienced staff available, whose time and work we appreciate and value so we compensate them accordingly. We have approximately 15 staff at each location who are responsible for some part of the medicine process, not including hotel services.
- 15 local staff at each location to support our programming including their health insurance, holiday pay, and vacation pay
- The cost of medicine.
- Professional advisory board which supports and guides our programming, mission, ethos, and contributions to the global movement of holistic healing taking place
- Various conferences and sponsorships that are important to the field each year.
- A Right Relation Fund which supports reciprocity projects including Indigenous reciprocity, Amazon and environmental conservation, scholarships, and local community projects
- Our advertising and promotion budgets, social media management, donations, executive staff salaries.
- On-site vehicles with repairs and fuel.
- Legal fees, taxes, and bank fees.
- Professional guest transportation to and from the center
We hope this breakdown helps you to understand our costs to sustain Soltara Healing Center, while also understanding our high degree of care and attention to detail, done by professional and experienced people! None of us here at Soltara (including executive management and founders) are bringing in six-figure salaries that you may see in corporate America. All of us are here because we deeply and unquestionably believe in the healing that this medicine has brought to our lives, the lives of those we care about, and whom we have met along the way. Although many of us live hundreds of miles away from our family and take a significant pay reduction compared to what could be made working for large corporate businesses, we all do this work because we love it, and we put our hearts first! This is our small business, and as we grow organically based on the needs of our community and the movement, we work diligently to not only sustain our center and our employees, but also the beautiful communities in which we live.
If you have any further questions, please let us know!
Pura Vida,
The Soltara Team
