About

About us

Hello, and welcome to View Retreats

We’re Mat and Stoewie, an Aussie and a Dutchman living in the beautiful Barossa Valley in South Australia. We’re both seasoned travellers with several decades of experience working for some of the biggest brands in the travel and hospitality industries. Between us, we’ve lived in and/or travelled to over 50 countries globally.

We’re also both qualified life coaches, so we believe in the power of travel to create transformative change. To help people to understand more about themselves, each other, and the world around them.

We’re passionate about finding and creating travel experiences that help to connect people to special places and experiences that will help them to rest, relax, reconnect & rediscover.

So, what is View Retreats?

We created View Retreats because we love nothing more than discovering exceptional getaways around the world. Not just the well-known sites that you find on every travel website, but unique places and experiences where you can unplug, unwind and reconnect with the natural world.

So, View Retreats is two things. Firstly, we offer a specialist travel agency service for personalised spa and wellness holidays. We use our extensive experience in travel and life coaching to craft bespoke spa and wellness holidays for clients around the world. You can find out more about those here.

Secondly, we’re a travel blog. We write articles about our favourite spa & wellness travel destinations and experiences, with the goal of helping our readers find the perfect relaxing getaway for them. To keep up to date with our latest articles and experiences, sign up to our newsletter.

So whether you’re here to explore one of our wellness holidays, or just to gather inspiration and information, welcome! We hope you find the right balance for you with View Retreats.

Hi, I'm Mat

Co-founder, View Retreats

I grew up in a tiny South Australian town called Whyte Yarcowie, where the local population consisted of 28 people and 24 dogs!

By the time I was a teenager, I was desperate to get out and see the world, especially because my mother had performed all over the globe as a dancer in her youth. I would obsess over her old photo albums, and couldn’t wait for the day I would follow in her footsteps (travelling that is, not dancing!).

I got my first taste of it with a family trip to Bali in 1989, and I never looked back (except to regret those awful happy pants! lol).

I built a career in travel, working my way up to senior management roles at travel companies such as STA Travel, i-to-i (TUI Travel), Conservation Volunteers Australia, and Peregrine Adventures. I felt incredibly lucky to be working in an industry I loved, and that luck improved even further when I met my partner Stoewie at a travel conference in Melbourne.

My passion for spa and wellness holidays was first sparked by a visit to the truly spectacular Therme Vals in Switzerland back in the 90s (it’s still incredible – you can check it out here). Then, many years later, Stoewie and I both trained as life coaches, and it became very clear to us how disconnected so many of us have become from others, from nature, and from ourselves. It also helped us to better understand the transformative power of travel in helping people to reconnect to themselves and the world around them.

This inspired us to create View Retreats. A site that, after ten years, has now helped people all around the world to connect with opportunities for balance, renewal and transformation. For me, that’s what View Retreats is all about, and I hope we can help you find what you’re looking for too.

Peru

Cambodia

India

South Africa

Hoi, I'm Stoewie

Co-founder, View Retreats

The travel bug bit me early. In fact, I can’t remember a time before I was a traveller. I grew up in the Netherlands, and our family holidays were always spent abroad. My parents never liked visiting the same place twice so at a young age I got to experience many places like Spain, Greece, Croatia and Italy.

Then, when I saw an old Dutch TV series about holiday reps in Spain, I thought, I want to do that! So, I studied tourism and won an internship at the company featured in the series. As part of the internship, I spent 5 months in Bodrum, Turkey which further ignited my passion to explore more of the world.

During my studies, I was flown to the World Youth and Student Travel Conference in Melbourne, where I met Mat. It made me determined to return to Australia, but not before cutting my teeth as a backpacker. I began in Japan… and I lasted three weeks. It turned out that backpacking was not for me. I wasn’t made to sleep in a bunk in a smelly shared room – I needed a comfortable hotel. It gave me a true appreciation for luxury travel, something that lights me up to this day as I discover new destinations and luxury wellness experiences for View Retreats.

The concept for View Retreats was born from our belief that stepping out of your comfort zone and exploring new environments can inspire transformative personal growth. To this day, my goal remains to help people find rejuvenation and inspiration through our recommendations.

Cambodia

Honduras

Sri Lanka

Fiji

What do we mean by 'Wellness'?

Wellness means a lot of different things to different people.

For some, wellness is about serious physical treatments. From blood cleansing to purging, colonic irrigation, or extreme heat and cold therapies. Even injecting with bee venom – that’s apparently a thing. There are places where your wellness is a prize achieved only through serious effort, discomfort or deprivation. And some people love that, but…

That’s just not us.

At View Retreats, wellness is easy. It’s about finding the perfect balance between enjoyable activities like massage or yoga, immersion in nature, and connection. We find destinations, properties and experiences that help people to step out of the everyday, to connect with nature, with each other and with themselves. Activities to relax the body, refresh the spirit and calm the mind.

Because for us, wellness isn’t just physical health or mental health. True wellness is about striking a balance between all aspects of our being.

It could be going for a walk in nature, spending time with loved ones, taking a relaxing bath, or practicing meditation. It could be immersing yourself in another culture, enjoying an exceptional meal, or just kicking back and taking in an exceptional view… whatever helps you rest, relax and reconnect.

That’s why we focus on travel experiences and destinations that help you find your own version of wellness in a variety of exceptional and enjoyable ways.

A luxury spa cruise through Halong Bay. A traditional clay pot cooking class in an organic Sri Lankan garden. A sunset paddle off the Gili Islands in Indonesia. Or, if you prefer an urban getaway, a romantic cocktail amid a courtyard oasis in downtown Bangkok, or an after-dinner stroll through the vineyards of the Barossa Valley.

Wellness is about finding the right balance for you. And we hope you’ll find it with View Retreats.

Travel Well

Explore & Restore - Wellness Tours

Retreat of the month

Tropical Island Rejuvenation

The story

How it all started

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