The median group trip booked through SquadTrip cost $1,664 per traveler, and 57% of bookings were paid on a payment plan rather than all at once. Those figures come from a sample of recent multi-day trips run by hundreds of organizers on SquadTrip, the booking and payment platform for group trips. Here is what those trips cost, how guests paid, and when they booked.
TL;DR:
- Price: median $1,664 per traveler (middle half: $849 to $2,887). Tour company trips ran highest ($2,000), celebration trips lowest ($877).
- Payment: 57% of bookings used a payment plan, 42% paid in full, about 1% used buy now, pay later (BNPL; 4.6% of more recent bookings).
- Deposits: about 15% of the price on the median trip, with a median of 6 payments in total.
- Timing: the median traveler booked 142 days ahead; the median trip got its first booking 10 days after going live.
- Size and device: median 5 paid travelers per trip, but 74% of travelers were on trips of 11 or more. 73% of checkouts happened on a phone-sized screen.
What a Group Trip Costs Per Traveler, by Trip Type
Price per traveler is what a guest was charged for the trip (package plus add-ons, after discounts, before any processing fee added at checkout), divided by travelers on the booking. Each trip counts once, so a 200-person trip doesn't outweigh a 10-person one.
| Trip type | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile | Median paid travelers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tour operators and travel companies | $1,228 | $2,000 | $3,281 | 5 |
| Retreats (wellness, yoga, other) | $855 | $1,906 | $2,975 | 7 |
| Weddings | $791 | $1,449 | $1,766 | ~17 |
| Friends, family and celebrations | $431 | $877 | $1,509 | 5 |
| Other or unlabeled | $668 | $1,350 | $2,326 | 6 |
| All trips | $849 | $1,664 | $2,887 | 5 |
Sampled trips of 1 to 30 nights with at least one paid booking. Some organizers run more than one trip type. The wedding row rests on a small number of trips; treat it as directional.
- Professional trips cost about twice as much as social ones. Tour company trips and retreats had medians near $2,000; birthday, reunion, girls' and bachelorette trips had a median under $900.
- The top end is high. One in four trips charged more than $2,887 per person, and one in ten more than $4,420.
- Trips are short. The median trip ran five nights; three in four ran three to seven.
Setting your own price? See how to price a retreat or the destination wedding budget guide.
More Than Half of Travelers Pay in Installments
| How the traveler paid | Share of bookings | Median days booked ahead | Median price per traveler |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payment plan (deposit + installments) | 57% | 181 | $1,944 |
| Paid in full at checkout | 42% | 84 | $750 |
| Buy now, pay later | 1% | n/a | n/a |
Paid bookings on the sampled trips above.
Plan bookers committed about three months earlier and bought pricier trips. A plan lets someone reserve a $2,000 trip half a year out without paying $2,000 that day.
Plan use by trip type: tour companies 62%, other or unlabeled 63%, celebrations 46%, weddings 45%, retreats 44%. For setup, see how to automate payment plans for group trips.
Deposits Are Smaller Than You Might Expect
We measured the deposit as the first payment on a payment-plan booking, divided by the booking price.
- On the median trip, the deposit was about 15% of the price (middle half of trips: 10% to 23%).
- Booking by booking, the median was 13.5% (bookings with a price above zero).
If you have read advice to take 20% to 40% up front, these organizers mostly asked for less and relied on installments for the rest. That only works if the schedule still covers your vendor deadlines; our retreat deposit policy guide covers timing and refunds.
| Payments made, including the deposit | Share of plan bookings |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2% |
| 2 to 3 | 18% |
| 4 to 6 | 43% |
| 7 to 9 | 24% |
| 10 or more | 14% |
Payment-plan bookings in the sample; includes any extra early payments. Shares are rounded, so they sum to 101%.
The median plan took 6 payments, which fits the lead time: a traveler booking 181 days out has room for about six monthly payments.
Buy Now, Pay Later Is Still a Small Slice
SquadTrip added BNPL providers partway through the sample period, so we also measured BNPL on more recent bookings alone: 4.6% of paid bookings. Klarna had 41% of them, Afterpay 30% and Affirm 29%.
Classic "pay in 4" BNPL was built for smaller purchases: the CFPB describes a $50 to $1,000 purchase split into four payments over six weeks, and Afterpay's US pay-in-4 tops out at $2,000. Affirm's monthly plans go higher but may carry interest. With a quarter of trips above $2,887 per person, an organizer's own installment plan, with no cap and no interest, reaches more travelers.
When Guests Book: Months Ahead, and Mostly on Phones
| Booked before departure | Share of bookings |
|---|---|
| Less than 30 days | 10% |
| 30 to 89 days | 21% |
| 90 to 179 days | 30% |
| 180 days or more | 39% |
Median: 142 days; middle half: 74 to 229 days.
The first booking usually arrives within weeks. Among trips that sold at least one spot, the median first paid booking came 10 days after the page went live (18 days after the page was first created). 44% got one within a week and 73% within 30 days; 9% waited more than 90 days.
Phones dominate checkout. In recent months, 73% of completed checkouts happened on a phone-sized screen. Check your trip page on a phone before you share the link.
How Big Group Trips Really Are
| Paid travelers on the trip | Share of trips |
|---|---|
| 1 to 5 | 51% |
| 6 to 10 | 21% |
| 11 to 20 | 16% |
| 21 to 40 | 8% |
| 41 or more | 4% |
The median trip had 5 paid travelers, but counted by traveler the picture flips: 74% of travelers were on trips of 11 or more, and 53% on trips of 21 or more. Weddings were the largest (median about 17), then retreats (7). Counts include only guests who paid through SquadTrip.
What This Means If You're Planning a Group Trip
- Offer a payment plan on anything over about $1,000. Most travelers chose one, and plan bookers committed months earlier.
- Open bookings early. Nearly four in ten travelers booked six or more months ahead.
- Size the deposit to your vendor deadlines. About 15% was typical.
- Expect the first booking within days to weeks. Share the page with your warmest contacts first.
- Design for phones. Nearly three in four checkouts came from one.
For the full workflow, see how to collect money for a group trip or compare tools in our group travel payment platforms guide.
Methodology
- Source: SquadTrip's booking database, queried read-only in October 2026. Aggregates only; no trip, organizer or traveler is identified, and every figure combines bookings from many organizers.
- Sample: a sample of multi-day trips (1 to 30 nights) that departed during a recent period, each with at least one paid booking, drawn from hundreds of organizers.
- Bookings counted: not deleted, cancelled or marked as tests, with at least one payment received.
- Excluded: SquadTrip's demo account, staging, QA and test-mode accounts, a conference-ticketing account, test-mode card charges, and organizers pricing in non-US-dollar currencies.
- Trip type: inferred from the occasion the organizer selected and keywords in the trip name. Trips by organizers who identify as a travel company or tour operator count as tour trips unless clearly a wedding or retreat.
- Payment method: the option the traveler chose (payment plan or pay in full); BNPL means a completed Klarna, Affirm or Afterpay payment.
- Other windows: BNPL share uses a more recent window of bookings, because BNPL providers were added partway through the sample period. Device share uses completed checkouts from the months when device tracking was available; "phone-sized" means narrower than 768 pixels.
- Limits: group sizes count only travelers who paid through SquadTrip; first-booking timing covers only trips that sold a spot.
