The 5 numbers that are enough to run your marketing.

Ask a host how their marketing is going and the answer is almost always a feeling: "Instagram's doing well", "not sure the ads are paying off", "this year feels slower". The feelings are nobody's fault: they're what's left when the numbers aren't there. But you can't decide where to put money with feelings, and in fact whoever navigates by feeling usually puts it where they've always put it.

The good news is that running a retreat's marketing doesn't take an analyst. It takes five numbers, a spreadsheet, and half an hour a month. Here they are, in order of importance.

1. Where customers come from (asked out loud, every time)

The most valuable number is also the most handmade. With every new inquiry, one question: "mind if I ask how you found us?". On WhatsApp, by email, on the phone: always. And the answer gets written in one single place, next to the name.

Tracking tools (the pixel, tagged links) measure clicks, and they're useful. But the spoken question captures what no pixel sees: "a friend told me about you", "I saw a video of yours months ago", "I asked ChatGPT". After three months of answers you have the true picture of your channels, and every legend ("Instagram brings us loads of clients") becomes checkable. It's the artisan version of big-company attribution, and at your volumes it works better.

2. The inquiry → booking rate

Of all the people who write to you for information, how many book? Count the month's inquiries and the bookings that come out of them: 30 write, 6 book, you're at 20%.

This number tells you where the problem lives. Many inquiries, few bookings: the problem is after the contact (response speed, price presented badly, a policy that scares, missing follow-up). Few inquiries but almost all closed: the problem is upstream, you need more traffic, and you can buy it knowing you convert it. Without this number, instinct always says "we need more marketing", even when the bucket leaks in the middle.

3. The cost per inquiry (when you pay to be seen)

If you spend on ads: what you spend divided by the inquiries it brought. €300 in campaigns and 10 inquiries makes €30 per inquiry. Alone it says little; crossed with number 2 it says everything: if you convert one inquiry in five, an ads customer costs you €150. On a €900 ticket with the margins from the empty-seat piece, that's a bargain. On a €300 ticket, it isn't. It's the calculation that turns "ads are expensive" into "ads cost X to bring me Y", which is the only sensible way to set their budget.

4. The percentage of direct bookings

Of all the season's bookings, how many arrive through your own channels (site, email, WhatsApp, word of mouth) and how many through portals? It's the number from the GetYourGuide piece: your dependency level. There's no right threshold for everyone, but the direction matters: if year after year the direct share grows, the system is working, and every percentage point gained is commission saved and customers whose contact you own. If it stays flat, you're renting your growth.

5. The margin per session (not the revenue)

The last number doesn't look like marketing, but it commands all the others: what's left, per session, after costs. Session income, minus fixed and variable costs, minus commissions, minus the marketing spend attributed to that session. It's the number that gives meaning to the other four: it tells you how much you can afford to spend to fill a seat (the empty-seat math), which sessions deserve more budget and which formats actually earn. Revenue inflates the ego; margin pays for the winter.

How to keep them without losing your mind

One sheet, five columns, one row per month. Thirty minutes at month's end, maybe with the first Monday's coffee. The value isn't in accounting-grade precision: it's in the time series. After six months you see the trends, and decisions change nature: no longer "should we try more ads?" but "cost per inquiry is up 40%, let's change the creative"; no longer "does Instagram work?" but "Instagram brought 2 inquiries out of 40, let's scale back the time we give it".

Two mistakes to avoid. First: measuring too much. Twenty metrics get looked at for one month and never again; five get kept for years, and five kept beat twenty abandoned. Second: measuring the things that like being watched (followers, likes, visits) instead of the ones that pay the bills. The five numbers above share one property: each one answers a concrete decision. If a number changes none of your decisions, it's not a metric, it's a paperweight.

What you can do today

First: open the sheet today and reconstruct last month, even roughly. The first row is the hardest; from the second on it's routine.

Second: add "how did you find us?" to your first reply message, starting now. It's number 1 and it costs one sentence.

Third: in month three, make your first decision based on the sheet instead of the feeling. Just one. That's the moment the method pays for itself.

The real work is wiring these numbers to the technical tracking (pixel, links, forms) so they update almost by themselves, and reading them together to set the season's budget. If you'd like, we can build your first sheet together in a free audit, with your real numbers.

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SOURCES

1. This piece is entirely methodological: the five metrics and example thresholds are marketing management practice applied to the retreat business model (fixed dates, limited seats), not research data. The internal numeric references (margins, tickets) point to the Empty Seat and Direct Channel pieces, with sources already cited there (Cornell CHR, Arival, Cloudbeds).