Sara Mormino
Co-Founder — Estate Acquisition
Sara sources and signs every estate on our books — negotiating low-season leases, walking each house in person and checking it against our retreat-readiness list before it is ever listed.
About Retreat Ready
Every house, ready before you arrive.
We started with a mismatch that annoyed us. Extraordinary houses sit empty for half the year, losing money. Meanwhile hosts with waiting lists cobble retreats together from hotel function rooms and unsuitable rentals. Both problems solve each other.
What we actually do
Retreat Ready takes fixed-term low-season leases on luxury estates and converts them into turnkey retreat venues. That conversion is the whole business: we survey the house against a retreat-readiness checklist, measure and kit out the practice spaces, contract the chef and the service team, arrange the insurance, and document all of it so a host knows precisely what they are booking.
Then we hand the keys to someone who can fill it. Hosts book a week, build a retreat page on our platform, and their audience books, pays and completes intake through it. The host teaches. We run the house.
We deliberately stay small. We would rather lease twelve estates we know intimately than list two hundred we have never visited.
What we won't do
- ·Take a property we haven't visited in person.
- ·Approve a host whose programme we don't believe in.
- ·Oversell a house — group caps are contractual, not aspirational.
- ·Put a guest in a room that doesn't match what they paid for.
By the numbers
- 7
- estates under lease this season
- 31
- retreats hosted since 2024
- 1 quote
- estate plus the services you choose — no hidden fees
- 5 days
- average time to answer a host application
The team
Four people, one season at a time.
Joe McDermottroe
Co-Founder — Product & Technology
Joe builds the platform: estate profiles, the quote planner, host retreat pages and guest intake — the systems that let a host book a house and fill it without a single spreadsheet.
Name TBC
Creator Acquisition & Support Lead
The first voice a host hears. This role reviews applications, guides new creators through pricing their retreat and stays with them from enquiry to the day their guests arrive.
Name TBC
Estate Services Lead
The person who makes each house retreat-ready in practice: contracting and briefing the chefs, concierges, housekeeping and welcome teams, and inspecting every estate before a season opens.