For the third year running, travel advisor Christine Yanke is proving that the connections women are missing are sometimes closer than they think — and that it takes a deliberate act of travel to finally make them happen.
At a Glance
Punta Cana hosts an annual women's group retreat designed for relaxation, connection, and personal renewal at an all-inclusive resort. The retreat brings together women of varying ages who participate in wellness activities, build friendships, and experience meaningful transformation through intentional community-building over a week-long stay.
Two women. Four doors apart. Twenty-five years of living on the same street, and not a single conversation between them. It took a beach in Punta Cana to change that. For travel advisor Christine Yanke, that moment of recognition — two neighbors becoming friends thousands of kilometres from home — is the clearest possible answer to why she keeps doing what she does.
Now in its third consecutive year, Yanke's annual women's group retreat to Punta Cana has become more than a recurring booking on a calendar. It has become a community. A ritual. A moment that women plan their entire year around. And for Yanke, who has watched the group grow and deepen with every January that passes, the reward is deeply personal as much as it is professional.
The Trip That Keeps Coming Back
The idea behind the retreat is disarmingly simple. Gather a group of women, bring them to an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic, and give them the time and space to breathe. "I am very excited to be taking a group of women for the third year now in January to Punta Cana," Yanke says, the enthusiasm in her voice entirely unperformed. "So that they can put their feet up, relax, reset, unwind, meet new women, like-minded women, and just fill up their own cups."
The language of cups being filled and refilled runs through everything Yanke describes about this trip. There is no complicated itinerary. No packed excursion schedule. No pressure to perform enjoyment. The resort provides the backdrop, but the women provide the energy. And that energy, Yanke has learned over three years, has a way of surprising everyone, including the women themselves.
The Surprise That Changes Everything
Every year, some women arrive at the resort fully committed to doing absolutely nothing. No activities, no group sessions, no structured anything. Just a sun lounger and a cold drink. Yanke has learned not to push, but she has also learned to watch. Because something almost always happens. Women who had initially said that they were just going to go and sort of put their feet up for the week actually jumped into lots of the wellness opportunities at the resort, such as water aerobics, and tried yoga for the first time. The resort meets them where they are, and where they are, it turns out, is often more open than they knew.
That openness extends far beyond fitness classes. It spills into conversations by the pool, dinners that run long, mornings spent talking about things that never quite surface in the rush of everyday life at home. And sometimes, it results in something as quietly extraordinary as two women discovering they have been neighbours for a quarter of a century. "It was interesting last year," Yanke recalls, "where two women who have lived four doors down from each other for 25 years had never actually met each other or even seen each other before." She pauses on that detail, as if she is still a little astonished by it herself. Because the point it makes is impossible to argue with. Proximity does not equal connection. Intention does.
A Trip for Every Woman
One of the most deliberate and important things about the way Yanke has designed this retreat is its inclusivity. The age range alone tells the story. Last year, participants ranged from 50 to 80 years old. Mothers and daughters. Sisters. Cousins. Girlfriends. Grandmothers and aunts. The trip is not aimed at a particular demographic or life stage. It is aimed at women who are ready to give themselves permission to go.
The planning process itself has become part of the experience. Yanke gathers the group in summer, usually in June or July, to lock in dates and begin building the anticipation. "This gives us something to look forward to," she explains, noting that for some of the women, this is the one trip they take all year. The planning, the group chats, the shared excitement across the months leading up to January, all of it is part of what the trip delivers. Community does not begin at the airport. It begins the moment a woman says yes.
What Transformation Actually Looks Like
Yanke is not someone who throws the word transformation around lightly. But she uses it, because she has seen it, repeatedly, with her own eyes. "I see them transform in just a week," she says. "I see everybody come back happy, inspired, connected, and excited about doing it again next year." That last part is not incidental. The fact that women return year after year, that the group has grown to 21 confirmed participants for the upcoming January trip, is the most honest endorsement the retreat could ever receive.
The insight behind all of it is one that Yanke arrived at through observation rather than strategy. She noticed something real about the women she works with and the women in her wider community. "I just realized that there was a need for women to connect with each other," she reflects. "And I realized that other ladies sometimes just need a nudge to get away with a girlfriend and get some time to just reconnect with themselves, and how important that is." That nudge, quiet and unhurried, is exactly what Yanke provides.
January, Punta Cana, and 21 Women Ready to Go
This coming January, Yanke will lead her largest group yet to the TRS Turquesa in Punta Cana, a luxury adults-only resort on one of the Dominican Republic's most celebrated stretches of coastline. Twenty-one women. Three years of momentum. A community that continues to grow because the women inside it keep telling their friends, their sisters, and apparently their long-lost neighbours about what it did for them.
Yanke shows no signs of slowing down. "I will just keep talking about it," she says, "and I do, for the whole six months before I get the group together again." The talking, the gathering, the welcoming of new women into the fold, it is not marketing to her. It is a continuation of the same impulse that started the retreat in the first place. A belief that women deserve space, connection, and the particular joy of a week where someone else handles everything.
As for what comes next, Yanke's answer is as warm and certain as everything else she describes about this trip. Twenty-one women, Punta Cana, January, TRS Turquesa. "We are all just so grateful and excited." The community is already in motion, already looking forward, and already, in the best possible sense, transformed.
