Chelsea Winter is promoting a women's wellness retreat in the Southern Alps next year. Photo / Supplied
Chelsea Winter has hit back at an RNZ story on her planned women’s wellness retreat, saying the four-day $6800-$9400-a-head Nourish & Bloom event is not a “gimmick” but a “place for women to release what no longer serves”.
The celebrity chef and author posted an invitation to her more than 100,000 Instagram followers on Monday, inviting them to take up 20 spaces (17 remain according to her website today) at the all-inclusive retreat in June next year at Flockhill Lodge, 25km east of Arthurs Pass.
Places cost $6888 per person for a twin share suite and $9444 for a private king suite, according to the booking page on Winter’s website.
“You are not simply booking a retreat. You are saying yes to a sacred return – to your body, your power, your radiance, your truth,” marketing on the website says.
Nourish & Bloom was Winter’s expansion from cookbook author into the growing $11 trillion global wellness industry, RNZ reported this week.
“It’s where followers look for meaning and guidance in sound and energy healing, alchemy (a mystic form of something close to chemistry), breath work, and a host of other alternative and fringe practices that often have little to no scientific evidence that they work,” the state broadcaster reported, noting a Business Insider story that said “influencers” such as Winter were increasingly using in-person events to further build their communities and create revenue streams.
“If Winter could do a couple of these a year, that is a tidy income,” Massey University marketing professor Bodo Lang told RNZ, adding such events were also an opportunity for creating more content and turning attendees into “word of mouth agents”.
Many followers would’ve spent years in a “parasocial” relationship – a non-reciprocal connection – with Winter and would aspire to get closer to her and then spread the word, Lang said.
“It is converting your largely passive, possibly loss-making audience online into a community, customers and ultimately super fans.”
Winter didn’t respond to RNZ’s request for comment, the broadcaster wrote.
But the 41-year-old posted a more than 600-word response on her Instagram this morning.
She’d initially declined to comment to RNZ as “I could already feel the narrative had been shaped”, Winter wrote on Instagram.
“[But] I feel it’s important to speak – not from defensiveness, but from devotion to truth. The article was under-researched, speculative, and in many places, simply inaccurate.
“Firstly, I’d like to correct something: this retreat is not a ‘$10,000 experience’. The twin-share option is $6888 for three nights at one of New Zealand’s most prestigious luxury lodges, with all meals, accommodation, guided sessions, and world-class facilitators included – some of whom are flying in from overseas.”
It would cost more to book three nights at Flockhill privately, without the retreat inclusions, Winter wrote.
Her career as a bestselling cookbook author, who is soon to release her eighth book, meant she’d spent the past 13 years “pouring my heart into nourishing this country”, even in challenging times, “because I believe in women empowering women”.
In recent years she had also begun sharing more of the self-care and “personal evolution” that allowed her to “pour from a full cup even while raising two beautiful boys as a solo mum”.
This included the retreat and more affordable options would follow, Winter wrote.
“Everything I create now is made with deep care, purpose and intent. To reduce me to an ‘influencer’ marketing a generic luxury wellness trip solely for profit misses the point entirely.”
She worked hard to “walk in truth, to live in integrity, and to help light the path for others”, and the retreat was the start of something big, she wrote.
“This retreat is not a gimmick. It is the most heart-led offering I have ever created… for these women, it will be life-changing and… it’s their experience, their transformation, and their truth that matters most.”
She wouldn’t be “diminished, discredited or shamed”, Winter wrote.
“Not by clickbait. Not by outdated narratives. And certainly not by those who feel uncomfortable when women remember their power.”