Retreat Venues in Georgia (the Country), 2026: Where to Rent a Whole Venue for 15 to 40 People

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Published 25 September 2026·42 min read·Prices and facts checked: September 2026

Georgia (the country) has about a dozen properties an organiser can take whole for a retreat, and most of them answer with a quote rather than a price. This guide compares them region by region, with beds, practice spaces, drive times from each airport, 2026 rates and the contacts to write to.

A retreat venue is a property you can take whole: every bed, a practice space that holds your whole group, a kitchen that cooks your menu, and one contract covering all of it. In Georgia that combination is rare. Most places sold as a "retreat centre" here are one of three other things.

• Venues for exclusive hire. You bring your group and your teacher, the venue brings beds, food and space. Two Georgian properties are listed this way on RetreatHub, the one international directory that treats the country as a venue-hire market: Glamping Tago in Adjara and Kiketi Farm outside Tbilisi.
• Hotels and resorts with halls. Kakheti, Kazbegi and Bakuriani are full of them. They sell rooms and a conference room, quote by the room night, and keep other guests in the building unless you buy every room.
• Programmes sold by the seat. BookRetreats carries 30 retreats around Georgia, and Russian-language organisers sell week-long trips at 68,000 to 123,000 RUB a head. These are somebody else's retreat, and the venue behind them is rarely named.

If you already have a group and a teacher, only the first kind is useful, and the second becomes useful once you buy it out.

Twelve properties across the country are big enough, equipped enough and organised enough to take a retreat of 15 to 40 people. This is the short list, with the numbers that decide a booking. The rate column says what each one actually sells: a buyout, a room night, or a per-person programme.

Two patterns run through that table. Eight of the twelve answer with a quote and BIOLI prices per person per programme, which leaves Glamping Tago, Ampelo and Chateau Mere as the three you can budget from before you make a single call. And the big resorts are not private. Buying 30 rooms out of 310 leaves you sharing the restaurant with a wedding.

Adjara is the easiest mountain region to reach from Europe. Kutaisi International Airport takes the low-cost flights to 50 destinations with no night-flight restrictions, and Batumi has an international airport of its own. It is also the region with the fewest venues, so the choice is small and specific.

Glamping Tago

Where: the hill above Village Tago in Khulo municipality, mountainous Adjara, at 1,185 m, with ridges to roughly 2,000 m around it. Drive time: 87.4 km and about 2.5 hours from Batumi airport, the last 9.2 km on a 4x4 road from Khulo. Capacity: 33 beds on site (12 Lotus Belle tents for two and a nine-bed dome dormitory), plus 64 beds in 27 rooms in seven village guesthouses three to ten minutes' walk away, and about 60 camping spots between them. Practice space: a 138 m2 wooden platform under a sailcloth tent and a 38 m2 indoor geodesic yoga dome, with mats, blocks, bolsters and straps, a projector, screen, speaker and microphone. Season: 1 April to the end of October. Good for: an organiser who wants the whole place, a fully vegetarian kitchen and a buyout price on paper rather than a quote. Watch out for: the last stretch needs a 4x4, tents share two bathhouse blocks rather than having private bathrooms, the only fully enclosed practice space is the 38 m2 dome, and there is no massage table and no gong, so a teacher who needs either brings it.

We have hosted retreats here since 2018, and our retreat page lists them with dates and sizes: a meditation retreat for more than 100 people in August 2026, a 16-woman yoga retreat from Kazakhstan, 13 women from Slovakia, a 12-person breathwork group, and the IT Soul Camp, which grew from 8 people in 2023 to the whole camp for 34 guests in June 2026. The largest group so far was 120, using the camp and the village guesthouses together.

Eco House Merisi

Where: Silibauri in the Merisi valley above Keda, Adjara, at 803 m. Drive time: 49.1 km and 70 minutes from Batumi airport. Capacity: 12 cottages and 3 villas holding 2 to 10 people each, up to 54 guests overnight, most with a private pool or jacuzzi and a glass bedroom over the gorge. Practice space: a hall seating 60 on the restaurant's upper floor and an open veranda for 40. Food: Georgian and mountain Adjaran cooking, with a halal menu on request. Season: all year. Good for: a group of 30 to 50 that wants mountain views without a mountain road, and the largest indoor group space of any small Adjara venue. Watch out for: the units are spread across a hillside rather than stacked in one block, there is no shop nearby so a group brings what it needs, and Merisi sits up its own side valley, so adding it to a Batumi to upper Adjara drive costs an extra 23.3 km and 38 minutes. It is a destination, not a stop.

Hotel Ambassadori Goderdzi

Where: the Goderdzi ski resort at 1,699 m, on the Batumi to Akhaltsikhe road, 106.6 km from Batumi airport or 34 km and 45 minutes beyond Village Tago. Drive time: about 2.5 to 3 hours from Batumi. Capacity: a full-size hotel with an indoor pool, hot tubs, sauna, gym and its own meeting rooms, with the ski lift at the door. Season: all year, with the ski season December to mid-April. Good for: a group that wants upper Adjara with hotel comfort and no tents. Watch out for: a September 2026 guest reports an infection picked up in the jacuzzi, and more than one person in that party, and calls the playground broken and dirty. Ask about the wet areas before you book a wellness group in.

Chateau Milisi

Where: Milisi village above Keda, Adjara, at 559 m. Drive time: 37.1 km and 53 minutes from central Batumi, up the Milisi side valley, a 12.9 km and 26-minute detour off the main Adjara road. Capacity: rooms from a 45 m2 family room to a 70 m2 apartment for five. Price from: USD 30 a night for a family room, USD 40 for a 55 m2 family apartment, USD 49 for a deluxe double of 44 to 55 m2, USD 80 for the apartment and USD 120 for a 45 m2 jacuzzi suite. Practice space: an events space, plus a heated panoramic pool, Finnish sauna and wine cellar. Season: all year. Good for: a budget group that wants room rates on the website instead of a quote. Watch out for: reviewers through August and September 2026 describe building work on the complex with daytime noise, a thin breakfast where proper coffee costs extra, and insects at the buffet.

Calypso Kvariati Hotel

Where: Kvariati on the Black Sea coast south of Batumi. Drive time: 11 km and 20 minutes from Batumi airport, the shortest airport run of any venue in this guide. Season: all year. Good for: a coastal group with a tight travel budget, and visiting yoga teachers who already use it as a base. Watch out for: it is 470 steep concrete steps down to the beach, without railings, so it does not suit a group with limited mobility. The main Instagram has been quiet since 2022 while the yoga account posted in August 2026, so phone before a group commits.

Eagle Nest and Gomarduli: two names to treat carefully

Both of these come up whenever someone asks about retreats near Batumi, and neither is what that answer usually describes.

Eagle Nest above Kvariati is real, active on Instagram and rated 5.0, but it has 29 Google reviews and is small. It suits an intimate retreat of a handful of people, not a group of 20 to 40.

Gomarduli, above Shuakhevi at 1,236 m, is the old Dao Space, and the directory listing that still calls it an Adjara mountain resort with 20 bedrooms and 60 guests describes an operation that no longer runs. What is there now is a village inn, the old gomarduli.life address no longer belongs to it, and public reviews of the former resort include a group of 25 that arrived in February 2022 to no running water, ran short of food when snow closed the road, and was refused a refund. It is 74.6 km and about 1.5 hours from Batumi airport, up its own side valley off the Khulo road.

Within an hour of Tbilisi airport you can have a venue at 1,150 m, which is the best trade Georgia offers a group flying in from far away: mountain air without the mountain transfer.

Kiketi Farm

Where: Kiketi, in the hills southwest of Tbilisi, at 1,150 m. Drive time: 44.1 km and 57 minutes from Tbilisi airport, the shortest airport run of any real retreat venue in the country. Capacity: 27 rooms and 27 bathrooms, sleeping up to 65, in treehouses, Oda houses, a bridge building and containers. Practice space: ten of them, from a 25-guest pavilion to a meadow for 150 to 200. The Yoga House takes 15 to 50, Greenhouse #1 takes 30 to 100, Greenhouse #2 takes 50 to 150, the Gallery takes 70 to 110 in U-shape or theatre style, and the Waterfall space takes 50 to 70. Season: all year. Good for: the biggest residential group in Georgia that can still be run as one retreat, with a farm-to-table restaurant, spa, horses and its own qvevri wines. Watch out for: a September 2026 review describes heavy construction across the property, machinery and trucks, disclosed only at check-in, and the buyout price comes by quote. Ask in writing what building work is planned for your dates.

BIOLI Wellness Resort

Where: the Kojori recreation zone at 1,151 m, 15.4 km and 27 minutes above Tbilisi's Freedom Square, 28.5 km and 45 minutes from the airport. Capacity: cottages under old pines. Programme: diagnostics-led weeks called Intro, Smart Detox, Anti-Stress & Rebalance, Weight Management, Premium Revival, A Strong Immune System, The Art of Sleeping and Mental Detox, plus a Corporate Wellness package. Season: all year. Good for: a company or a group that wants a medically supervised wellness week rather than an empty venue. Watch out for: BIOLI sells its programmes per person, not a hall and beds, so an outside teacher cannot simply move in with a syllabus. One guest was asked for a reservation fee to hold a restaurant table, payable only by bank transfer, and another found a cottage that had not been checked before check-in.

Jewelberry Glamping Hotel

Where: Shuaguli in Mtskheta municipality. Drive time: 49.3 km and 68 minutes from Tbilisi airport. Capacity: geodomes of 28 and 38 m2, each for up to four guests, with private bathroom, kitchen, air conditioning and terrace. Facilities: jacuzzi or Japanese furako barrel per house, plus sauna, restaurant, swimming pool and a grill guests can borrow. Season: all year. Good for: glamping for a group that does not want a mountain road. Watch out for: the bathroom is outside, and one reviewer reports water that was not hot enough when the temperature dropped. The venue posts as @jb.glamping.ge, not the older @jb.camp account.

Laguna Beach Club and Chateau Mukhrani

Laguna Beach Club on Lake Bazaleti, 66.2 km and 76 minutes from Tbilisi airport, really does rent whole houses: a seven-bedroom villa for 15 to 20 people and a cottage for 18 with a dance hall. It is named here rather than recommended because each building tops out around 18 to 20 people and the outdoor pool runs only from 1 June to 15 September.

Chateau Mukhrani sits on the official Convention Bureau's venue list as an event venue 25 minutes from Tbilisi, and it is a royal chateau and winery built for conferences and weddings. It sells events rather than residential stays, so it belongs on a wedding shortlist rather than a retreat one.

Kakheti has more group-capable properties than any other region in Georgia, most of them within an hour and a half of Tbilisi airport. The catch is that almost all of them are resorts: you are buying rooms in a working hotel, not a private house.

Tsinandali Estate

Where: Tsinandali in Telavi municipality. Drive time: 92.9 km and 104 minutes from Tbilisi airport. Capacity: 124 rooms and suites in an 18-hectare park. Practice space: an open-air amphitheatre for up to 700 with a retractable roof, a 300-seat theatre, a Gallery for up to 400 at a reception, a Ballroom for 300 at dinner, and three meeting rooms for 10 to 18. Included with a meeting: projector and screen, flip chart, portable stage, wired and wireless internet; an AV technician and microphones cost extra. Season: all year. Good for: the largest and best-rated event set-up in Kakheti, 4.9 stars from nearly 4,000 reviews. Watch out for: Collection rooms are 22 to 23 m2, small for a residential retreat where people spend the day in their room, every rate comes by quote, and one September 2026 guest reports unfriendly reception through the whole stay. Vegan menus need asking for in advance.

Lopota Lake Resort & Spa

Where: Napareuli, on its own lake in 60 hectares. Drive time: 105.1 km and 122 minutes from Tbilisi airport. Capacity: 310 rooms across 16 buildings, every room with a balcony. Practice space: six conference halls. The Event Hall is 24 by 16.5 m, about 396 m2, for 400 theatre-style or 200 banquet; the Big Conference Hall is 20 by 11 m, about 220 m2, for 180 theatre or 90 banquet; four smaller rooms take 20 to 50. Season: all year. Good for: a large corporate-style retreat with pools, spa and a water park. Watch out for: it is never exclusively yours. Recent reviewers report facilities closed without explanation and the restaurant they wanted booked out for weddings and events.

Kvareli Lake Resort

Where: the shore of Lake Kvareli, with Alazani valley views. Drive time: 139.8 km and 133 minutes from Tbilisi airport. Capacity: 100 rooms in two buildings, one Georgian-style and one European-style. Practice space: the 224 m2 Kakheti Ballroom in the European building and the 120 m2 Alazani hall in the Georgian one, both with audiovisual equipment. Season: all year, check-in from 15:00. Good for: a group of 60 to 100 that wants a lake, two buildings to split between, a strong breakfast and activities from pedal boats to padel. Watch out for: one September 2026 reviewer describes a fire in one building handled with no communication to guests, slow restaurant service and booked activities that did not run. Another notes that most of the staff do not speak English, so brief your group leader accordingly.

Horizons Bakurtsikhe

Where: Bakurtsikhe, on a ridge over the Alazani valley. Drive time: 94 km and 86 minutes from Tbilisi airport. Capacity: pods with private terraces, capacity by enquiry. Included: the sauna every evening 18:00 to 23:00, a year-round panoramic outdoor pool, a fire pit and a Kakhetian breakfast by a local chef. Season: all year. Good for: the best-reviewed small property in Kakheti at 4.9 stars, marketing retreats directly, with wine tastings, culinary masterclasses and Alazani valley views from the bed. Watch out for: the group capacity and a buyout rate come by enquiry, summer brings insects on the terraces, and one guest found the wine list much shorter on arrival than the menu sent before the stay. The restaurant is built around Kakhetian meat cooking, so a vegetarian group needs to agree the menu first.

Chateau Mere

Where: outside Telavi. Drive time: 76.6 km and 86 minutes from Tbilisi airport. Capacity: rooms of 30 to 50 m2. Price from: USD 110 for a 30 m2 standard double, USD 130 for a 35 m2 suite or a 45 m2 superior suite, USD 150 for a royal suite or a 50 m2 duplex and USD 120 for a 50 m2 family room for four, all on the website rather than by quote. Facilities: spa, culinary classes and horse riding. Season: all year. Good for: an organiser who wants to cost a buyout from real numbers. Watch out for: two reviewers on 31 August 2026 describe a wedding held at the hotel with no warning and noise until 3 am, plus worn interiors and housekeeping only on request. Get a written no-events clause for your dates.

Panorama Kakheti Resort

Where: Gurjaani. Drive time: 109.7 km and 99 minutes from Tbilisi airport. Capacity: a renovated four-star resort, capacity by enquiry. Facilities: indoor and outdoor pools, the largest indoor spa in the region, a venues section and a restaurant built on local produce. Season: all year. Good for: a spa-heavy week with almost uniformly five-star reviews for cleanliness, staff and the pools. Watch out for: the restaurant is the one repeated criticism, both the capacity and the buyout come by enquiry, and one guest describes stray dogs coming into the outdoor dinner service with no staff response.

Ampelo

Where: Kardanakhi. Drive time: 96.7 km and 90 minutes from Tbilisi airport. Capacity: six room categories; ask for the total room count with your buyout enquiry. Price from: 310 GEL for a superior room, 330 with a Caucasus view, 370 for a superior triple, 470 for a junior suite, 500 for a suite and 570 for a family room. Facilities: outdoor pool, its own winery and a restaurant. Season: all year. Good for: the one Kakheti property where an organiser can add up a room-by-room buyout from the website before making a single call. Watch out for: 4.3 stars from 157 reviews puts it exactly on our bar, several reviewers call the service unresponsive, and recent ones describe an untended pool, a poor breakfast and an hour's wait for food in a near-empty restaurant. Put everything in writing.

Lost Ridge Inn, Brewery & Ranch

Where: on the ridge above Sighnaghi, 2.8 km and about 40 minutes on foot from the town, climbing from 767 m to 804 m, or a four-minute drive. Drive time: 97.5 km and 90 minutes from Tbilisi airport. Capacity: a small inn; ask for the bed count. Facilities: its own craft brewery and horse ranch. Season: all year. Good for: a small group that wants riding, beer and campfire evenings, with 4.8 stars and a good vegetarian kitchen. Watch out for: the rooms are small, breakfast is cheese and yoghurt without much else, the riding guide speaks little English, and a bed count and group rate come by enquiry.

Ambassadori Kachreti

The fastest big-resort run out of Tbilisi at 73.3 km and 64 minutes, with villas, a banquet hall, meeting rooms, indoor and outdoor pools, spa, golf and horse riding. It is named here rather than recommended: September 2026 brought a run of one-star reports including a green insect-filled pool, a dead bird left on the grounds for three days, unanswered booking messages followed by a charge ten days later, a billed order that never arrived, and one guest counting a single usable toilet for the whole conference and dining floor.

Yes, above 1,600 m, and the constraint is not the venue but the season and the road. Gudauri sits directly on the Tbilisi to Kazbegi road: adding it to the airport-to-Stepantsminda drive costs nothing in distance or time, so the two share one road and one transfer.

Rooms Kazbegi

Where: 1 Gorgasali Street, Stepantsminda, at 1,837 m, under Mount Kazbek. Drive time: 169.9 km and 175 minutes from Tbilisi airport, climbing from 470 m over the Jvari pass. Capacity: 155 rooms. Practice space: Meeting Hall No.1 for 150 cinema-style, 120 banquet, 60 boardroom, plus three halls for 46 each. Season: all year. Good for: the biggest and best-known mountain hotel in the country, with a spa pool and a terrace that everybody photographs. Watch out for: it is a public hotel rather than a private venue, its booking widget stops at 10 guests so a group writes to kazbegi@roomshotels.com instead, and the repeated complaint is the restaurant, where one guest waited 45 minutes for a coffee that never came. Reviewers also call the rooms dated for the price.

Quadrum Ski & Yoga Resort, Gudauri

On paper this is the best fit in the high mountains: 21 rooms and 64 beds at about 2,190 m in upper Gudauri, a dedicated yoga room, a conference room, an indoor heated pool, a Finnish sauna, a massage cabinet, a fitness area and a restaurant, and the hotel arranges group yoga tours on request. It is a short walk from the Shino lift and 70 km of pistes. It is named rather than recommended because 4.1 stars from 366 Google reviews is below our bar: reviewers report rooms right on the highway and very loud traffic, a shower that drains slowly, a basement pool that smells musty and a limited breakfast. The praise goes to the staff and the price.

Kokhta Bakuriani

Where: Bakuriani at about 1,700 m, ski-in ski-out. Drive time: 201.3 km and 184 minutes from Tbilisi airport, a three-hour transfer at best. Capacity: 92 rooms from 29 to 88 m2. Practice space: meeting rooms for up to 50 and up to 100. Season: all year. Good for: a winter retreat with published seasonal discounts, including 35 per cent off stays of four nights or more between 25 August and 10 December 2026, a wide buffet and an indoor ice rink for the group's free afternoon. Watch out for: two reviewers advise checking the bill for items they had not ordered, there is no air conditioning, and a buyout rate comes by enquiry.

These three regions carry a handful of good properties and one hard limit each: distance in Svaneti, size in Guria, condition in Imereti.

Gistola Hotel, Mestia

Where: Mestia, Svaneti, at 1,416 m. Drive time: 219.2 km and 323 router minutes from Kutaisi airport, so more than five hours by road. Facilities: restaurant, bar, room service, sauna, heated indoor pool, meeting and banquet facilities, secured parking and a free airport shuttle. Season: all year. Good for: the practical Svaneti base, where almost every recent review is five stars. Watch out for: Svaneti is a fly-in or a two-stage trip for a group, and a room count and group rate come by enquiry.

Shromantic Garden, Guria

Where: Shroma in Ozurgeti municipality, 8 km from Ureki, between the Bakhmaro ridge and the Black Sea. Drive time: 66.7 km and 79 minutes from Batumi airport. Capacity: a small selection of private rooms plus one off-grid forest cabin, so it fits a small retreat rather than a group of 20 or more. Practice space: a covered yoga deck under pines. Food: a vegetarian buffet at 30 GEL for breakfast (09:00-10:00), 35 GEL for lunch (14:00-15:00) and 40 GEL for dinner (from 19:00), with the dinner menu changing daily around whichever chef is cooking. Season: all year, reception 24/7, check-in after 15:00 and check-out before 11:00. Good for: a group of eight to twelve that wants a vegetarian kitchen and a price it can budget from. Watch out for: the room stock caps the group size, and the house tells drivers not to use Google Maps for the last stretch and to use Organic Maps, maps.me or Yandex Maps instead.

Nunisi Forest Hotel & Spa, Imereti

A forest resort on the Nunisi mineral springs that has taken guests since 1856, with naturally warm baths rich in flint and sulphur, 173.7 km and 165 minutes from Tbilisi airport. Reviewers love the forest, the old cable car and the staff, and say plainly that the bathtubs and the whole spa area need maintenance. It is named rather than recommended: a bed count, a hall and a group rate all come by enquiry, and bookings go by phone, Facebook or Booking.com.

Two numbers decide the budget: the nightly rate for the whole property and the per-person daily rate for three meals. The table below holds every rate on this page that comes with a figure rather than a quote, in the currency the venue uses. Our own rates are group rates for an organiser taking the whole camp, not what one guest pays on the booking engine.

2026 prices

Two worked examples, both for 25 people at Glamping Tago for six nights. In September: 3,584 GEL a night for the buyout is 21,504 GEL, full board at 100 GEL per person per day adds 15,000 GEL, and the event privatisation fee adds 2,000 GEL. That is 38,504 GEL, or about 257 GEL per person per night with three meals, before transfers and activities. The same group in April: 11,772 GEL for the buyout, the same 15,000 GEL of food and the same 2,000 GEL fee, so 28,772 GEL, or about 192 GEL per person per night. The season, not the group size, is the biggest lever an organiser has on the price.

Rent by the hour in Tbilisi and put your people in city apartments. Two places publish real hourly rates, which is rare in Georgia.

Tbilisi Yoga Loft

The main room at 14 Radiani Street in Vake is about 150 m2, takes 30 to 50 people and costs 70 GEL an hour with Wi-Fi, air conditioning, water, a Bluetooth speaker, 15 bricks, belts and blankets included. Mats are a separate add-on at 5 GEL a mat an hour or 15 GEL a mat a day, and blocks and bolsters are 15 GEL a piece a day. At the Yoga Villa, 37 Oniashvili Street in Saburtalo, the 50 m2 Samsara room with a fireplace holds 15 to 25 and costs 50 GEL an hour, the 10 m2 Sun room for spa work is 30 GEL and the 9 m2 Moon room for private sessions is 25 GEL. A hall booked outside the studio schedule that forces a class to move is charged double. Booking takes 50 per cent up front and they take cash, card, bank transfer or PayPal; cancel more than 7 days out for a full refund, 3 to 6 days out for half, and nothing inside 72 hours. One caveat from a recent reviewer: a class cancelled by email an hour before it started.

Gymnasia

The bigger movement option, at 14a Elguja Amashukeli Street, 9.4 km and 13 minutes from Freedom Square. Eight halls go by the hour, by the day or as a full-floor exclusive, and all prices include VAT with a one-hour minimum. For a retreat the relevant rooms are the 180 m2 Events Hall, a mirror studio with an open floor at 300 GEL an hour, the 200 m2 tatami judo hall at 300 GEL, the 70 m2 sprung-floor karate room at 200 GEL and the 50 m2 soft-floor gymnastics hall at 150 GEL. The whole combat floor as an exclusive takeover is 600 GEL an hour. You may bring your own teacher. It is a martial-arts and fitness club rather than a yoga studio, and one parent reports a course cancelled for a month and a fight over the refund, so pay per session rather than buying a block in advance.

Cheaper on paper, more expensive once you add everything a venue includes. On ss.ge, the main Georgian classifieds site, 3,952 private houses are advertised for daily rent: a six-room 400 m2 house on Baron de Bay Street in Didi Dighomi, Tbilisi at 1,000 GEL a day, a seven-room 1,000 m2 house in Mtskheta at 800 GEL, a four-room 200 m2 house in Mukhiani at 500 GEL. Many owners price by headcount, so the advertised figure is a floor.

For 25 people that means two or three houses, and then you are the venue. You buy and cook the food or hire a cook, you find a room big enough to practise in, you organise the transfers, and you carry the risk. Renting direct from an owner for a short stay normally means a deposit of 50 to 100 per cent of the stay, and without a written contract there is no protection if the price changes after arrival or a damage claim appears at the end.

The house route works for an experienced local organiser running a low-cost weekend. For a first retreat abroad it usually costs more than it saves.

Three meals a day, cooked in the house, served at fixed times. It is almost never included in a room rate or a buyout: you agree a per-person daily figure on top. Glamping Tago charges 100 GEL per person per day and Shromantic Garden 105 GEL. Prices in Georgian hotels, cafes and restaurants rose 8.1 per cent year on year in January 2026, so a rate agreed a year out is worth locking in writing.

What is extra almost everywhere: alcohol, corkage on wine you bring yourself, transfers, activities, the practice space if you want it outside your agreed slots, and any special menu that needs separate shopping. Vegan, gluten-free and allergy menus need notice at booking, not on arrival.

Yurtalicious, our own kitchen, as an example of what to ask

Our yurt restaurant is fully vegetarian: no meat and no fish. Breakfast buffet is 09:00 to 11:00, lunch a la carte 13:00 to 16:00, dinner buffet 19:00 to 21:00, cooked by women from the village, and the room seats up to 32. Groups who want meat get a BBQ live station at 45 GEL per person for the whole group, meat khinkali on the supra at 15 GEL, or dinner at a village guesthouse. Own wine carries a corkage fee of about 15 to 20 GEL a bottle. Bottled water is 3 GEL for half a litre, and the tap water comes off the mountain, so most groups just fill bottles.

Ask your venue the same four questions: is the kitchen vegetarian, what happens to the meat eaters, what notice do allergies need, and what does a packed lunch cost on a hiking day.

June to September everywhere, with the shoulders depending on altitude. Mountainous Adjara has daily highs above 19 C from 5 June to 21 September, and snow lies from 17 October to 25 April. Around Tbilisi and Kakheti the hot season runs 6 June to 13 September and July peaks at 31 C, which is too hot for a daytime practice outdoors.

Two things follow from that table. If your group wants to practise outdoors, Adjara and the high Caucasus beat Kakheti in July and August. And if you want the whole country at its best for the least money, the first three weeks of September are it.

Fly into the airport nearest the venue, charter one coach or two minibuses, and do it in one movement rather than in taxis. Georgia has three international airports and the difference between them is hours, not minutes.

Georgian Railway runs two double-decker pairs a day between Tbilisi and Batumi, 08:00 arriving 13:35 and 17:10 arriving 22:45, daily. Tickets go on sale 20 days before departure and summer Batumi trains sell out, so a group of 30 books the day the window opens. Each passenger is registered with a personal identification number, children under 14 with a birth certificate or passport, and an unused ticket is refunded in full only up to 15 hours before departure, at 85 per cent from 4 to 15 hours and at 70 per cent inside 4 hours. Separate electric trains run Kutaisi to Batumi twice a day, and there is a service from Kutaisi Airport station to Batumi in about 2 hours for around 31 GEL.

At Kutaisi airport, Georgian Bus and CityBus wait outside arrivals and leave 30 to 60 minutes after each flight. GoTrip private cars track the flight from USD 76 to Batumi and USD 93 to Tbilisi. For a whole group, Best Bus Georgia runs 8, 16 and 20-seat Mercedes Sprinters and 46, 50 and 55-seat coaches out of all three airports, quoted per trip. A group of 30 needs two minibuses or one coach.

We run our own group arrivals in waves, pooling people off different flights into shared 4x4 cars from Batumi, Kutaisi or Tbilisi, so a group landing across a whole day does not need one big bus sitting idle. A minibus from Tbilisi collects from any address the organiser names. A picnic stop at the waterfall on the way up costs 50 GEL on top of the transfer.

Warm layers, rain gear and a head torch, whatever the forecast says. This is the question our own guests ask most often before a mountain retreat, and the answer does not change between June and October.

• Cold nights. Mountain days are warm and mountain nights are cold even in August, when the average low in our valley is 13 C. Tents and rooms at altitude have heating, rarely air conditioning. A fleece, a windbreaker and a hat cover it.
• Rain. Adjara's wettest months are October and November, and mountain fog is normal in June. Ask how many of your group fit under cover at once. At Glamping Tago that is the 138 m2 platform under its sailcloth tent, with the 38 m2 dome as the fully enclosed option, and groups book fixed daily slots in both, for example 11:00 to 13:30 and 17:30 to 19:00.
• Weather apps. Forecasts for a mountain venue usually show the nearest town in the valley, hundreds of metres lower. Ask the venue what it is actually doing up there.
• Water and power. Our tap water comes off the mountain and is free to refill; bottled water is 3 GEL for half a litre. Bring a bottle or a thermos rather than cases of plastic.
• Signal and internet. Ours is Starlink at about 300 Mbps, and Magti has the best mobile coverage in the valley. Many mountain venues have neither, so ask for a number, not an adjective, if your teacher runs anything online.
• Sound equipment. If your programme needs a stage or amplified music outdoors, ask what covered power and cover exists for it. Rain has ended more outdoor sessions in these mountains than cold has.

Four routes reach a Georgian venue.

• The venue's own site or Instagram. The fastest route, and for the small properties the only one: their contact pages carry a mobile number and a WhatsApp link, and the Instagram bio usually repeats both.
• RetreatHub. Filters venues by capacity from 8-12 up to 100+ and prices in GBP, USD or EUR across about 45 countries. Its Georgian listings are Glamping Tago, at GBP 1,692 for a two-night weekend and GBP 5,076 for a week, and Kiketi Farm, which quotes on request. There are no Georgian chefs, photographers or local guides in its retreat-professionals directory, so those you find yourself.
• The Convention and Exhibition Bureau of Georgia. The official body runs a free request-for-proposal service: one brief goes to the hotels, venues and agencies it lists and they answer. Its directory covers Tbilisi, Batumi, Kutaisi, Kakheti, Tsinandali, Sairme, Kazbegi, Shekvetili, Gudauri, Napareuli, Kobuleti, Borjomi, Mukhrani, Mtskheta and Tskaltubo, and gives a hall-by-hall capacity table for each hotel in schoolroom, U-shape, boardroom, cinema and banquet layouts with the room dimensions. It is built for conferences, so the tables are the useful part and the rates are not there.
• Local marketplaces. YOLO sells experiences and event tickets in Georgian, English and Russian and carries a directory of Tbilisi practice venues and event spaces. It is aimed at individual buyers, not at group hire.

Book the venue nine to twelve months out for a summer date, open registration six to nine months before with an early-bird deadline, and price from a break-even of six to ten guests rather than a full house. High-season dates in June to September at a small mountain venue go 6 to 12 months ahead.

A Georgian venue contract is short and the deposit does the work. Ours is public and typical of what to expect:

• A 30 per cent deposit of the accommodation cost confirms the booking, is non-refundable and counts as the group's minimum spend.
• Dates can be pencilled without a deposit for one week, then they are released.
• Free changes up or down until 60 days before arrival. From 60 to 30 days you may reduce by up to 2 tents free of charge, from 30 to 14 days by up to 1 tent, and inside that the contracted rate stays billable.
• The full programme is due 30 days before arrival, the room list 7 days before, and the final participant count is locked in writing 14 days before, when the balance is invoiced and becomes payable before arrival.
• Meals, transfers and activities are invoiced separately.
• Cancelling earlier than 60 days before arrival loses only the deposit. Inside 60 days a full cancellation stays billable at the contracted rate, with war, natural disaster and force majeure treated case by case.
• A last-minute high-season booking, inside about 60 days for June to August, takes at least 50 per cent up front.

Check-in at our camp runs from 15:00 to 16:00 and check-out is 11:00, with no fee either side; a group that has bought the whole property may pitch its own tents at no extra charge, which is one way to get past 33 beds without moving anyone into the village.

By bank transfer to a Georgian account, by a card payment link, or in cash on arrival. Georgian venues invoice in GEL, and larger ones will invoice a company in EUR. Ours is a Bank of Georgia transfer or a payment link in GEL that stays live for 24 hours, with no card surcharge.

Russian-issued Visa, Mastercard and Mir cards do not work in Georgia, which is the commonest payment problem for Russian-speaking groups. The routes left are cash brought in, or a transfer to a Georgian account. KoronaPay, which used to be the standard answer, states that Koronapay Europe is voluntarily withdrawing its authorisation and that new transfers are unavailable, so it can no longer be used.

For European and British organisers, Wise pays out to a Georgian IBAN or by SWIFT at about 2.97 GEL to the euro, and discounts its fee above EUR 22,000 per transfer. Hold the exchange rate in mind when you set your seat price: you are selling in euro or dollars while the venue bills in lari, and a year between the deposit and the balance is a year of currency risk.

Three things: entry insurance for every participant, the right to work if your teacher is being paid in Georgia, and an understanding of what the VAT line on your invoice means.

Entry insurance. From 1 January 2026, under Government Decree No. 602 and Article 12 of the Law on Tourism, every foreign tourist must hold health and accident insurance for the whole stay with a minimum sum insured of 30,000 GEL, about USD 11,000 or EUR 9,500. Paper or digital is accepted, in Georgian or English, covering arrival and departure days, and the Patrol Police may ask for it at the border. It applies to every nationality, including visa-free ones, and to business travel. A compliant policy costs from 2 GEL a day from the Georgian insurer Irao or from EUR 2.7 a day from the broker E-Cover. Send your participants the requirement with their booking confirmation and collect the certificates before they fly: one uninsured participant turned back at the border is your problem, not theirs.

Your teacher's right to work. From 1 March 2026, amendments to the Law on Labour Migration require most foreigners who work, freelance or run a business in Georgia to hold a Special Labour Activity Permit. Applications go through the labour-migration portal of the Ministry of Labour and a decision follows within 30 calendar days; renewals are filed at least 40 days before expiry. The permit covers one employer and one position, or one activity for the self-employed, and is renewed yearly. The fine for working without it is 2,000 GEL for the worker and 2,000 GEL for the employer on a first offence, and it applies to remote workers and the self-employed as well as employees. Three jobs are now closed to foreigners altogether: passenger transport, courier services and tour guiding, so your driver and your local guide must be Georgian. Whether a visiting teacher paid abroad for a one-week retreat falls inside the permit regime is a question for a Georgian lawyer, and it is worth an hour of one before a repeat programme.

VAT. The standard Georgian VAT rate is 18 per cent, and registration is mandatory once taxable turnover passes 100,000 GEL in any continuous 12 months, so an established venue's invoice normally carries it. Georgian law sets special place-of-supply rules for services tied to immovable property, transport, catering and leisure, which is exactly what a buyout, its meals and its activities are. Ask whether the quoted rate includes VAT before you build your seat price on it.

Six questions, and the answers matter more in the mountains than anywhere else in the country.

1. Water and power. What happens when the grid drops? Georgia had a nationwide blackout on the night of 23 July 2026 that began at 00:10, automatically shut down Tbilisi's water pumping stations, stopped metro trains inside tunnels and halted the Tbilisi to Batumi train, with power fully restored by about 09:30 the next morning. Ask what happens to water, heating and Wi-Fi.
2. The road. Which stretch needs a 4x4, who drives it, and what does the venue do when it snows? Ask for the answer in kilometres, not adjectives.
3. The internet. If your teacher runs an online session or you need a call, ask for a number in Mbps and which mobile network works.
4. Exclusivity. Are you the only group? Get a written no-events clause for your dates. The wedding that ruined two Chateau Mere guests' nights in August 2026 is exactly what a retreat cannot absorb.
5. The practice space in the rain. How many of you fit under cover at once, how much of that is fully enclosed, and for how many hours a day is the space yours?
6. What is already in the room. Mats, blocks, bolsters, straps, candles, a sound system, a projector, a massage table, a gong. Ask the venue to list what it has in writing, and bring the rest: we have mats, blocks, bolsters, straps, a projector, a screen, a speaker and a microphone, and no massage table and no gong.

Five mistakes, in the order they cost money.

Booking more beds than the group will fill. The deposit is your floor and late reductions are limited everywhere. Book to your realistic minimum and add.

Treating a resort as a private venue. Thirty rooms in a 310-room resort is not a retreat. If exclusivity matters, either buy the whole property or pick a property small enough to buy.

Underestimating the last kilometres. Map times on Georgian mountain roads are optimistic. The 9.2 km from Khulo up to us takes 15 minutes on a map and 30 to 35 in a car. Build the transfer as its own leg with its own budget.

Treating a side valley as a stop on the way. Merisi, Milisi and Gomarduli each sit up their own valley off the Adjara road and add 13 to 23 km and 26 to 38 minutes to a drive that already climbs, and the map answers "not on the way" for all three. Gudauri, by contrast, sits on the Tbilisi to Kazbegi road and costs nothing to add. Check before you promise a stop.

Marketing the wrong language of wellness. Yoga in Georgia is treated mainly as fitness and a healthy lifestyle, and Georgian studios stress the physical and breathing side rather than the religious or esoteric framing. That matters if you plan to sell local seats; it does not matter at all if your group flies in.

If you are running a training rather than a retreat, our guide to running a 200-hour yoga teacher training in the mountains goes through the three-week version, and for a company group the offsite and team-building venues guide compares the same regions on meeting rooms and internet instead of practice space.

Glamping Tago for this

Glamping Tago as your retreat venue in the Adjara mountains

We are a whole-property retreat venue on the hill above Village Tago in Khulo municipality, mountainous Adjara, at 1,185 m, two and a half hours from Batumi. You bring your group and your teacher; we give you every bed, both practice spaces, the kitchen and one contract.

There are 33 beds on site (12 Lotus Belle tents for two and a nine-bed dome dormitory) and 64 more in seven village guesthouses three to ten minutes away, which is how groups larger than 33 stay in the village. Practice happens on a 138 m2 wooden platform under a sailcloth tent or in the 38 m2 indoor geodesic yoga dome, with mats, blocks, bolsters, straps, a projector, a screen, a speaker and a microphone. The kitchen at Yurtalicious is fully vegetarian and full board is 100 GEL per person per day.

We have hosted retreats since 2018, from a six-woman group with a psychologist to a meditation retreat of more than 100 people in August 2026, and we can run two groups at once with scheduled slots in the shared spaces. Write to Anastasia at anastasia@glampingtago.ge or +995 599 29 97 57 and you get availability, a draft programme and a quote within 24 hours.

Guests

12 to 33 on site, up to 120 using the village guesthouses

Beds on site

12 Lotus Belle tents for two plus a nine-bed dome dormitory

Practice spaces

138 m2 covered platform and a 38 m2 indoor geodesic yoga dome

Whole-property buyout, 2026

1,962 GEL a night in April to 4,488 GEL in July and August

Full board

100 GEL per person per day, fully vegetarian

Drive time from Batumi

87.4 km and about 2.5 hours; the last 9.2 km from Khulo is a 4x4 road

Transfer

Private 4x4 for up to 4 people, one way: 75 GEL from Khulo, 265 GEL from Batumi

Season

1 April to the end of October

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