Free tool
Pre-departure admin hours calculator
See how many hours the roster work on one departure takes and what that becomes across a full season of trips.
Free tool, no sign up
Small group trip break-even calculator
Enter your price, your per traveler land cost and your fixed outlays, and see the seat at which the departure turns profitable and what it pays you per hour.
Most organizers price a trip by taking the ground quote, adding a margin that feels defensible and rounding to a number that reads well on a sales page. That method survives a season or two and then fails quietly, usually the year the exchange rate moves against you or the guide retainer goes up and the price does not.
This calculator works the other way around. It starts from what you actually spend on a departure, separates the costs that scale with each traveler from the ones you pay whether ten or sixteen women come, subtracts the fee taken from every payment you collect, and tells you the break even seat. Then it divides what is left by the hours you put in, which is usually the number that changes how you price next season.
Your result
Gross revenue from the roster
$41,400
Everything the roster pays you before a single cost comes out.
Net profit on the departure
$10,239
What is left after land costs, fixed outlays and the fee on every payment.
What the trip pays you per hour
$120.46
Net profit divided by every hour you put into selling and running it.
Travelers needed to break even
5
The seat at which the departure stops losing money and starts earning.
Run it once with your realistic roster and once with two fewer travelers, because that second number is the one you have to survive.
Which costs are fixed and which move with the roster
Sorting your costs correctly is most of the work. Hotel nights, meals, entries and per person ground transport scale with each woman who books. The local guide day rate, the van you chartered for the week, your own airfare and hotel, and the site inspection you did last spring do not move at all between ten travelers and fifteen.
Put fixed costs in the fixed field even when they feel like they belong to the travelers. Your own airfare is the one organizers most often leave out, on the reasoning that they wanted to go anyway. Leave it out and every trip looks more profitable than it is, and you will price the next season from a number that was never true.
The hourly figure is the one that changes decisions
Net profit on a departure can look respectable and still represent poor work. Eight thousand dollars sounds fine until you divide it by the hundred and twenty hours you spent answering questions, rebuilding the rooming grid and chasing three women for a final payment across two months.
If the hourly number comes out below what you would charge for a day of consulting or a week of your previous work, you have three levers and only three. Raise the price, cut the hours by removing the repetitive chasing and collecting, or run larger groups so the fixed costs spread further. Most organizers who fix this pull all three at once, modestly, rather than one of them hard.
Questions about this calculator
Should the single supplement go into the price field?
No. Use the double occupancy price here, because that is what most of your roster pays. Model the single supplement separately, since it should cover the extra room cost rather than add margin. If your supplement is priced below the actual second bed, that gap belongs in fixed costs.
What should I put for my hours if I have never tracked them?
Start at eighty hours for a two week international departure with twelve travelers and adjust from there. Count selling and answering questions, rooming, payment chasing, document collection, supplier coordination and the trip days themselves. Organizers who track it honestly for one season are usually surprised by how high it runs.
Does this account for travelers who cancel?
Not directly, so run it twice. Once at the roster you expect and once with two fewer women, which is a realistic late season loss on a group of twelve. If the second run is a loss, your deposit is too small or your fixed costs are committed too early.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The departure readiness checklist
Every task a small group departure needs between the day you announce it and the morning everyone meets in the lobby, in the order it has to happen.
Those are your departure's numbers, not a sample
You just put your own roster, your own dates and your own costs through it, which makes the result something you can act on this week. Bring the same figures to a demo and we will set the departure up around them, from the deposit through the rooming intake to the messages that go out in the final six weeks. Twenty minutes, and the numbers are yours either way.