Luxury travel concierge company Black Tomato has partnered with indoor spinning brand SoulCycle to offer fitness holidays for indoor cycling devotees. Jenny Southan reports

“Move. Breathe. Bond over nourishing food – and recharge under a sky full of stars. Our focus? Community, and deepening the ties that bond our extraordinary SoulFam together,” says the Retreats by SoulCycle website.

The trips are being organised in partnership with Black Tomato, and are designed to combine fitness and wellness, workshops and luxury travel experiences.

There will also be “physical, musical, emotional and community-based activities”, taking the lead from SoulCycle classes themselves, which are known for their life-affirming soundtracks and instructors who shout motivating messages throughout.

The first retreat was recently hosted in Austin and at the Lucky Arrow Retreat at Texas Hill Country, where participants took part in group meditation, stargazing, breathwork and healing classes, as well as SoulCycle sessions, of course. There was also a food truck crawl and a distillery visit.

Sarah Yang described her experience on the retreat with The Thirty: “It makes sense that the company would expand its offerings to high-end retreat experiences. It’s living that SoulCycle life beyond the bike and studio… You might be thinking that we’d be forced to do endless SoulCycle classes the whole retreat, but the only mandatory class was the one on the first day – the others were optional.

“We started the morning as a group with breakfast and an instructor panel where Melanie and Bevin both talked about how they became instructors. Then, we went to our next activity, a storytelling workshop [where] we learned about how to tell a compelling and concise story – and we all shared our own (very) personal experiences, which really helped us bond as a group.

“[At the end of the retreat we] did a letter-writing exercise (to ourselves or someone else in our life). Then we had our last group dinner, enjoyed s’mores by the campfire, and read notes of gratitude people had been putting in a box throughout the retreat.”

Retreats by SoulCycle will all last four days and have space for between 20 and 30 people. Prices will be dependent on location. Next up will be Las Vegas and Sedona.

Tom Marchant, co-founder of Black Tomato, told CN Traveller: “We want travellers on these retreats to feel an elevated version of what they gain from an in-studio class: empowered, rejuvenated and most importantly, connected to themselves and the people around them.”

SoulCycle isn’t the only fitness company to be tapping into the growing trend for wellness tourism. Earlier this year, luxury gym chain Equinox opened a hotel in New York, with more planned for next year and beyond in cities such as Seattle, LA, Houston and Chicago.

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