Nick Marinkovich didn’t have a lead problem.
He had a focus problem.
Selling group business for Hyatt Regency Orlando means working across a massive market. Nick is responsible for opportunities ranging from 10 to 100 rooms on peak across virtually every segment.
He could prospect literally thousands of people. But, the harder question was figuring out who was actually worth his time.
“I would get into these ruts and say, ‘I don’t even know where to focus. I don’t even know exactly what I should be doing.’”
And even after identifying someone, Nick didn’t want his first move to be another cold sales email asking for business.
He wanted to build relationships, to be useful, and a prospecting strategy that actually felt like him.
Through Sales on Tap, Nick began using AI-powered prospecting tools and prompts designed to help hotel sellers identify people based on the markets they wanted to pursue and the signals those prospects were already giving off.
Instead of spending hours manually digging through LinkedIn, he could start with a specific objective.
Finance. Tech. Sales-as-a-Service.
Who in those industries might bring meetings to Orlando? Who hosts regional sales kickoffs? Who runs training events? Who appears to have a reason to know someone like Nick?
One recent search surfaced approximately 60 contacts worth focusing on.
But the real value wasn’t the list, it was knowing why those people belonged on it.
“It allowed me to save so much time and to just have a good starting point. This is where I should be putting my focus when I’m doing my outreach.”
Suddenly, prospecting wasn’t a giant blank page.
Nick had somewhere to start.
Nick showed up as Nick.
Sales on Tap isn’t about automating relationships. It’s about using modern tools to create more time and space for sellers to actually build them.
Nick leaned into LinkedIn, creativity, and value-first outreach rather than immediately asking prospects for an RFP.
And people started noticing.
They recognized him when he was out in the market. They sought him out at his hotel. They engaged with his content. And increasingly, inquiries began coming directly to him rather than through a shared inbox or third-party platform.
“It’s meant for the person who has shown value without an ask over time, and they see me as somebody who they can trust, who they have a relationship with, and who they think can help them.”
Those moments gave Nick something else that is difficult to measure on a sales report: confidence.
The kind of confidence that comes from seeing evidence that your strategy is actually working.
WARM PROSPECTING™ IN ACTION
The best prospect isn’t always the one who submitted the RFP. It might be the one showing you they’re interested before they ever raise their hand.
Nick uses signals like email engagement, website activity and LinkedIn behavior to understand where interest may already exist. Instead of treating every prospect the same, he can focus his attention on people showing signs of intent and reach out with something useful rather than another sales pitch.
“When you have intent and when you have those signals, you just have such a better success rate at getting a response.”
That’s Warm Prospecting™: recognizing interest, providing value and building the relationship while the opportunity is still taking shape.
Before attending Connect Marketplace, Nick decided he wasn’t going to show up like every other hotel salesperson.
He created Care 2D2, a mobile care station designed to spark curiosity and give attendees a natural reason to approach him.
But he didn’t wait until the tradeshow floor to introduce it.
Before the event, Nick created a product-reveal video and shared it on LinkedIn. He also pulled the show’s attendee list and sent the video directly to people he wanted to connect with.
The goal wasn’t to ask for business; it was simply to make himself recognizable before everyone arrived.
And it worked.
“People then at the show were actively looking for me, knew me, and called me like, ‘You’re the LinkedIn guy. You’ve got the Care 2D2. Show me what you’ve got.’”
Instead of Nick walking around trying to start sales conversations, people were walking up to him.
And because Care 2D2 gave them something fun to talk about, those interactions didn’t begin with square footage, rates, or availability. They started like normal human conversations.
Then something interesting happened. The conversations naturally turned toward business.
Tell me about your hotel.
I’ll be in Orlando on these dates.
Could we schedule a site tour?
Nick had changed the dynamic.
He wasn’t chasing the conversation anymore.
He had created a reason for the conversation to come to him.
Sales on Tap gave Nick tools to identify the right people. It gave him modern prospecting strategies to reach them. It helped him recognize buying signals and intent instead of treating every prospect exactly the same.
But Nick supplied the most important ingredient himself: his personality.
The result is a sales strategy that feels less reactive and more proactive. Less transactional and more human.
And much more focused.
“This is working. This is the way to do this.”
The modern hotel seller doesn’t need to contact everyone.
They need to know who deserves their attention, when there’s a reason to reach out, and how to show up in a way people actually remember.
That’s what Sales on Tap helped Nick put into practice. And his advice to other hotel sellers is pretty simple:
“You wanna up your game, you wanna learn how to do things differently, creatively, stand out from a crowd, you gotta get a part of this.”
Ready to stop wondering where to start?
Sales on Tap gives hotel sellers the tools, training, and practical ideas to prospect smarter, recognize opportunity earlier, and build relationships before the RFP ever arrives.
Try it out yourself by accessing the free training inside Sales on Tap Community 👇
Most hotel sales emails aren’t competing against another hotel.
They’re competing against an overflowing inbox, a planner juggling six other priorities, a pile of RFP responses, and dozens of sellers using suspiciously similar language. Add automated outreach and AI-generated copy, and standing out gets even harder.
So what actually makes a planner stop, read, and reply?
That’s what Cory Falter and Celeste Berke Knisely wanted to know when they sat down with Alix Mendonca of Prestige Global Meeting Source on the Straight Up podcast by Sales on Tap.
Alix has spent years working across hospitality and the meetings industry. He knows what planners tune out, what earns their attention, and what makes a salesperson feel like an actual person instead of another automated message in the queue.
His advice starts with something refreshingly simple: act human.
Personalization isn’t putting someone’s first name at the top of a template. Planners can spot that trick from across the inbox.
Alix has an especially easy tell.
“What they shouldn’t do is send an email that has the body of the message in one font and my name in a different font. That tells me this has been mass-sent to a bunch of people.”
Nothing says “You’re special” quite like Arial 11 suddenly becoming Calibri 12.
The larger issue isn’t formatting. It’s what the formatting reveals: the seller hasn’t given the recipient much thought.
Real personalization doesn’t require an hour of research. Look at the planner’s LinkedIn activity, organization, recent events, destination interests, or details in the RFP. Find one useful clue that demonstrates you understand who you’re contacting and why the conversation might matter.
AI can be incredibly useful here. Use it to research, identify relevant talking points, and sharpen your message. Just don’t let it replace the thinking that makes the message personal.
AI should help you do your homework faster, not make your outreach feel like nobody did the homework at all.
Most prospecting emails are built backward.
The seller starts with what the hotel wants: an appointment, an RFP, a response, a booking, or a few precious minutes on someone’s calendar. The planner opens the message and immediately gets handed another task.
Alix suggests starting somewhere more human.
Maybe you notice the planner volunteers with a pet rescue, so you mention it and share a photo of your corgi. Is a corgi going to close a six-figure group? Probably not. But it might start a conversation, and conversations are where relationships begin.
The key is relevance without turning your research into a surveillance report.
Mention the conference they attended, an article they shared, or something relevant to their work. Think curious, not forensic.
Few phrases have clogged more inboxes while communicating less than “just checking in.”
Alix recalled receiving an email after sending an RFP that essentially said: We received your RFP, here’s the same information you already sent us, and someone will get back to you.
“That was an email that basically told me nothing and just clogged up my inbox.”
If you’re going to send an update, make the update useful.
Alix offered a stronger alternative: “I got your RFP. I am working on it right now. This is a perfect fit for our hotel. I’ll be in touch with you soon.”
It confirms receipt, communicates action, and gives the planner a reason to feel optimistic.
Every email creates a tiny tax on the recipient’s attention. If you’re going to charge it, give them something in return.
Hotels obsess over the experience guests have once they arrive, yet sales outreach often gets reduced to blocks of text that look almost identical.
Video is one simple opportunity to stand out.
When Cory asked Alix how many times a hotel seller had sent him a short introductory video with a proposal, his answer was startling: maybe twice.
Not twice that month. Twice in his career.
Alix prefers videos around 15 to 30 seconds. Three minutes? You’ve made homework.
The same principle applies to voice notes, visuals, or other unexpected touches. The goal isn’t to use every channel available. It’s to communicate in a way that fits the person you’re contacting.
As Alix put it, “Talk to them in the way that they like to be talked to.”
Hotel sellers know their properties inside and out. Unfortunately, that knowledge can turn an email into a feature avalanche.
Alix still receives what he calls “feature dumps.”
“We’ve got a swimming pool. We’ve got hotel rooms with beds in them, and they’ve got bathrooms.”
Congratulations. You have described a hotel.
A feature matters only when it connects to the planner’s objective.
Flexible meeting space matters because it reduces room turns. A particular loading setup matters because it simplifies production. A walkable location could reduce transportation costs. A renovated pool matters only if the attendees are actually going to use it.
Smart sellers don’t simply ask, “What do we have?”
They ask, “How will this actually work for this group?”
One of the most memorable pieces of outreach Alix received wasn’t a pitch at all.
Before meeting with a destination representative, he received a list of “15 things you may not know about our city.” Alix had grown up there and still learned something.
When they eventually met, the content gave them something to talk about.
That’s a powerful test for hospitality sales content:
Would this still be interesting if the sales pitch disappeared?
Destination tips, local history, unusual venues, logistical shortcuts, event ideas, behind-the-scenes stories, and useful planning insights can all create value before a buyer is ready to buy.
Sometimes the best response to a sales email isn’t immediately, “Send me a proposal.”
It’s simply, “That’s interesting.”
Standing out doesn’t mean copying the most creative salesperson on LinkedIn.
Alix pointed to hotel seller Nick Markonovich, whose creative videos have become part of his recognizable personal brand.
“You should do something like that but not that, because that’s unique to Nick and he’s building his brand.”
Maybe video is your thing. Maybe you’re funny. Maybe you write fantastic handwritten notes. Maybe you know your destination’s history better than anyone.
Find something you can do consistently without feeling like you’re performing somebody else’s personality.
Authenticity also beats polish. Alix likes videos where someone stumbles over a word and keeps going.
Turns out human beings remain surprisingly interested in other human beings.
Hotels regularly receive opportunities they can’t accommodate. The dates are unavailable, the space doesn’t work, or another piece of business makes the group impossible to accept.
Most sellers decline and move on.
Alix thinks that’s a huge missed opportunity.
Instead, connect with the planner and say something simple: “I know we weren’t able to accommodate you this time, but I’d love to stay connected.”
There’s no immediate ask and nothing left to sell. That makes it one of the safest moments to begin building a real relationship.
That planner may have another program in three months, six months, or two years.
A lost piece of business doesn’t have to mean a lost relationship.
Hospitality loves to say it’s a relationship business, yet much of the sales process has become transactional.
By the time an RFP arrives, hotels may already be competing primarily on dates, rates, space and concessions.
So don’t wait until then.
Find planners. Follow their work. Engage with what they share. Start conversations. Become familiar before there’s an opportunity sitting on the table.
LinkedIn isn’t a vending machine where sellers insert a connection request and wait for an RFP to fall out. Used well, it’s simply another room where relationships happen.
And leave yourself breadcrumbs. After meeting someone, send a quick LinkedIn message: “It was great meeting you in Tampa last week.”
Three years later, when you’re wondering how you know each other, the answer is sitting in your message history.
AI can already research prospects, draft emails, summarize information, and help respond to RFPs. Those capabilities will only improve.
That doesn’t make hotel salespeople less important. It changes where their value lives.
As Alix said:
“I think making yourself invaluable as a relationship builder is key to keeping your job, keeping us all employed in this industry and not being replaced by computers.”
If AI can respond to an RFP faster, the seller’s advantage becomes everything that happened before the RFP arrived: trust, familiarity, expertise, reputation and relationships.
Use AI as your researcher, editor and sparring partner. Let it remove repetition, uncover useful insights and help sharpen your thinking.
But don’t outsource your personality.
AI isn’t going to make email less crowded. It’s going to make creating average email dramatically easier.
That makes personalization, curiosity, brevity, creativity, and genuine relationships more valuable, not less.
Research before you reach out. Talk about the planner before talking about the property. Translate features into outcomes. Send something worth opening. Build relationships even when there’s nothing immediate to sell.
And for the love of overflowing inboxes everywhere, stop “just checking in.”
The future of hotel sales isn’t human versus AI. It’s sellers who use technology to become more useful, relevant, and human versus sellers who use it to create more noise.
As Alix said, “Being different will help you stand out from the pack, because if you do the same thing that everybody else is doing, you’re gonna get swept away just like everybody else is.”
Want your hotel sales team to stop prospecting cold and start building relationships with buyers before the RFP arrives?
That’s exactly what Warm Prospecting™ was built to do.
Learn more about Warm Prospecting™ >>
Give the planner a specific reason for your message. Share a useful update, relevant insight, resource, or next step. For example, instead of “Just checking in on your RFP,” try: “I’m reviewing your program now, and your meeting flow looks like a strong fit for our space. I’ll have options back to you tomorrow.”
Keep it as short as possible while still providing context and value. Busy meeting planners should be able to quickly understand why you’re reaching out, why the message is relevant to them,m and what you want them to do next. For many prospecting emails, a few short paragraphs are enough.
Focus on professional, relevant information such as a planner’s company, recent events, LinkedIn posts, destination interests, or details from an RFP. Use personalization to demonstrate relevance, not to prove how much information you were able to find about someone.
Yes, but AI works best as a research and editing tool rather than a replacement for the salesperson. Use AI to research prospects, identify relevant talking points, shorten drafts and improve clarity. The final email should still reflect your knowledge, judgment and personality.
Relevant, concise and genuinely useful messages have the best chance of earning attention. Focus on the planner’s objectives rather than simply listing hotel features. Personalization, useful resources, thoughtful questions, and human touches such as short videos can also help a seller stand out from automated outreach.
Artificial intelligence is changing hotel sales at an incredible pace.
Tasks that once consumed hours, such as responding to RFPs, drafting proposals, and organizing customer information, can now be completed in minutes. While those efficiencies are transforming the sales process, they’re also raising an important question: What makes a hotel seller truly valuable when technology can do so much of the administrative work?
According to Dan Paradiso, Vice President of Commercial Strategies at Make Ready, and Celeste Berke Knisely and Cory Falter, Co-Founders of Sales on Tap, the answer has little to do with mastering the latest AI platform.
The future belongs to sellers who bring enthusiasm, solve complex problems, build meaningful relationships, and create value that technology simply can’t replicate.
Let's see how the conversation unfolded...
Experience may earn an interview, but it isn’t what convinces commercial leaders to make a hire anymore. Dan believes the differentiator is something much harder to teach.
“I need to see enthusiasm. I need to see that you’re going to take something beyond AI, and you’re going to add personality to it.”
That enthusiasm isn’t just about energy. It reflects curiosity, adaptability, and a willingness to embrace change—qualities that have become essential as the hotel sales role continues to evolve.
Celeste knows this firsthand. She entered hotel sales without a background in selling or leadership, yet earned her first Director of Sales position because she demonstrated determination and a desire to learn.
“I’d never sold anything. I’d never managed anybody. But through seven interviews, I showed them that I had the desire and the drive.”
Her experience serves as a reminder that while technical skills can be developed, mindset is far more difficult to coach. Commercial leaders aren’t simply looking for someone who can execute today’s job description. They’re looking for someone who can grow into tomorrow’s.
There’s no denying AI will improve efficiency across hotel sales. Faster RFP responses, automated proposals, and better data analysis will help sales teams accomplish more with less effort.
But efficiency alone won’t create loyalty or win complex business.
Dan illustrated this with a situation many hotel sellers have faced: a client needs more guest rooms than the property has available. AI can recognize the inventory shortage, but it can’t pick up the phone, collaborate with a neighboring hotel, and negotiate a solution that keeps the client happy.
“Be that problem solver. Think how you can be a solution for clients, not just a connector to technology.”
That’s where the seller of the future creates value. Technology can provide information, but people provide judgment. They recognize opportunities, navigate unexpected challenges, and deliver creative solutions built on relationships and experience.
Celeste reinforced that point with one of the conversation’s most memorable observations:
“Detectives make great salespeople.”
The best sellers don’t stop at answering questions. They ask better ones. They uncover business challenges clients haven’t fully articulated and offer insights that go far beyond what’s written in an RFP. As routine tasks become increasingly automated, curiosity and critical thinking become even more valuable.
Hospitality has always been a relationship-driven industry, and that isn’t changing.
Whether it’s solving an unexpected problem, earning a referral, or opening the door to a new opportunity, relationships create advantages that technology simply can’t manufacture.
Celeste described it as the modern version of the Rolodex.
“What you bring to the table is the years of experience—or if you’re just starting out—the number of people that you’ve started conversations with.”
Today’s Rolodex may look like a LinkedIn network, but the principle remains the same. Every meaningful connection expands your ability to create opportunities for both your clients and your organization.
Those relationships shouldn’t begin when business slows down. They should be nurtured consistently, through thoughtful conversations, valuable insights, and a genuine interest in helping others succeed.
When Cory asked what separates exceptional sellers from average performers, Dan’s answer had little to do with sales techniques.
“They make mistakes, and they move quickly.”
Too often, sellers wait for perfect conditions before acting. They hesitate to prospect until business slows, delay decisions while seeking more information, or postpone outreach because the timing doesn’t feel right.
Top performers operate differently.
They make informed decisions, learn from setbacks, and keep moving. That willingness to act creates momentum, and momentum creates opportunity.
Celeste shared the example of a Director of Sales she’s admired for years—not because she manages the industry’s most luxurious property, but because she’s relentlessly proactive. She invests in weekly team training, protects prospecting time, prioritizes quick RFP responses, and consistently gets out into the local market to build relationships.
Those habits aren’t flashy.
They’re consistent.
And consistency is often what separates good salespeople from great ones.
One of the strongest themes throughout the discussion was the importance of standing out—not through clever sales tactics, but by consistently creating value.
Dan believes authenticity is what people remember.
“If you just always keep on top of mind, what is the right thing to do… you’re going to be authentically you.”
Celeste shared a perfect example of how that philosophy pays off. After years of consistently sharing insights on LinkedIn, she received an unexpected message from an executive she hadn’t spoken with in seven years. One piece of content reopened a relationship that led to a new opportunity.
Her advice was straightforward:
“Start putting yourself out there.”
That visibility extends beyond social media. Cory challenged sellers to rethink one of the most common habits in prospecting: sending “just checking in” emails.
Instead of making outreach about your hotel, make it about your customer.
Lead with an insight. Share an idea. Offer a solution. Help your customer solve a problem before asking for anything in return.
In a world where AI can generate emails in seconds, thoughtful communication becomes even more powerful.
AI will continue to reshape how hotel sales gets done, but it won’t replace the qualities that have always built lasting business relationships.
Commercial leaders are looking for sellers who embrace change with enthusiasm, solve problems creatively, build trusted relationships, and take initiative instead of waiting for opportunity to arrive. Those skills have always mattered. Today, they’re becoming the greatest competitive advantage a seller can have.
Technology will handle more of the routine work, giving sales professionals something increasingly valuable: more time to connect, collaborate, and think strategically.
The hotel sellers who thrive over the next five years won’t simply be the fastest to respond or the most proficient with AI. They’ll be the professionals who combine technology with empathy, curiosity, and decisive action to create experiences clients remember long after the contract is signed.
In the end, AI may change the mechanics of selling, but people will continue to be the reason customers say “yes.”
Hotel sales is having a “we need to talk” moment.
Wendy Norris, hospitality commercial strategy leader at Wren Hospitality Partners, recently sat down with Sales on Tap’s Cory Falter and Celeste Berke Knisely to tackle a touchy topic: hotel sales compensation.
Hotel buyers have changed. Technology has changed. Lead flow has changed.
But, compensation? It hasn’t changed since before Google.
Let that sink in.
We have to evolve.
Hotels used to hire salespeople for one thing: who they knew.
“We used to hire salespeople for their Rolodex,” Wendy said. “Right now, we don’t typically hire for that. We’re hiring for people who can just answer the leads.”
That shift created a generation of hotel sellers who are often more reactive than proactive. They respond to RFPs, chase inbound leads, update systems, and check activity boxes. Busy? Absolutely. Selling? Not always.
“They’re lead responders,” Celeste adds.
The danger is that inbound demand can make teams feel productive while hiding a bigger issue: low conversion, high acquisition costs, and weak self-generated pipeline.
Cory pointed out that third-party RFPs distributed through sourcing platforms are often won at rates of just 3% to 5%, meaning hotels spend enormous amounts of time pursuing business they’ll never book.
Meanwhile, a self-sourced pipeline can convert at a much higher rate.
Inbound leads are not actually free. They are just paid for somewhere else.
Celeste called out the hidden math: franchise fees, digital ads, tech platforms, commissions, rebates, and tools all contribute to customer acquisition cost.
“The profitability on most of the business is not what you think it is,” she said.
That matters because hotel teams often reward sellers the same way whether business was self-generated, inherited, paid for through marketing, or delivered by a third-party platform.
Wendy’s take was simple: “We have to reward the sellers that are bringing in the new business.”
Exactly. Pay for the behavior you want repeated.
Sales activity is not the same as sales progress.
A seller can make calls, send emails, log tasks, attend meetings, and still produce very little new revenue. That is motion. Momentum is different.
Celeste said future sellers should be accountable for “new business revenue,” “self-generated pipeline,” “strategic account growth,” and “win rate and conversion.”
That is a big shift from “Did you complete 25 activities?” to “Did those activities create revenue?”
Wendy added that individual accountability matters too. Many hotel comp plans still focus heavily on total team sales. But when everyone owns the number, sometimes no one owns the hunt.
AI RFP tools are already entering the hotel space. Celeste described tools that can respond to RFPs in “three to five minutes.”
That changes the seller’s job fast.
When AI handles the first response, sellers cannot hide behind inbox volume. Their value shifts to strategy, relationships, account expansion, content, reputation, and pipeline creation.
Wendy said it plainly: “Most of the salespeople don’t know how to sell.”
That is not an insult. It is an industry training failure.
For years, hotels trained sellers to process demand. Now they need sellers who can create it.
So what should hotel sales compensation look like?
Wendy suggested a livable base wage, plus incentive pay tied to new business. And no cap.
“New business, not inherited business,” she said.
Celeste connected it to the tech world: base salary plus OTE (on-target earnings). Hospitality may not go as aggressive as SaaS, but the idea is clear: give sellers real upside for real pipeline.
A smarter model could include different payout levels for:
That last category matters because sales, marketing, revenue management, and operations are increasingly interconnected. Reputation, content, reviews, and guest experience all influence whether a buyer chooses your property.
As Wendy put it, “If your reputation is in the toilet, your revenues are gonna be in the toilet.”
Hard to argue with that. Also, hard to embroider on a pillow.
Celeste pushed hard on another outdated habit: one-and-done sales training.
“You go to a workshop… and poof, you’ve learned it,” she said. “Imagine taking that same concept to riding a bike.”
Hotel sales teams need ongoing practice, coaching, roleplay, reinforcement, and modern selling skills. Not once a year. Not only at conference. Not only when numbers are soft.
They need to learn how to use AI, LinkedIn, intent data, CRM workflows, video, warm prospecting, and thought-leadership content.
Because sending “our ballroom is flexible” to every prospect is not a strategy. It is beige wallpaper with a send button.
Cory ended with the biggest shift: the best sellers will become educators.
They will use content to build trust. They will show buyers how to plan better meetings. They will share examples, answer questions, create social proof, and give AI tools more trustworthy signals to find.
“The sellers that are gonna win,” Cory said, “are gonna be the ones that put themselves out there.”
That is the future of hotel sales: less RFP babysitting, more demand creation.
The old model rewarded response. The new model must reward revenue creation.
Hotel sales compensation should push sellers to hunt, nurture, expand, and build trust before the RFP ever arrives. AI will not eliminate great sellers. It will expose the difference between sellers who create demand and sellers who wait for it.
The Rolodex is dead.
But proactive selling? Very much alive.
There is a moment in every industry shift when the people paying attention stop asking "is this really happening?" and start asking "how fast?"
For hotel sales, that moment is now.
Nickole Valdov, Vice President of Sales for Full Service at Aimbridge Hospitality, one of the world's largest hotel management companies, is not someone who softens the landing. On a recent episode of the Sales on Tap podcast, she sat down with sales consultant Celeste Berke and hotel marketing strategist Cory Falter to talk about what the next two to three years will look like for hotel sellers. Not the optimistic version. The real one.
"AI's not gonna take your job," Valdov said, "but an excited, curious salesperson that uses AI will take your job."
That is the frame. Everything else follows from it.
Here is the stat that should be hanging on the wall of every hotel sales office… the industry average win rate on a CVENT RFP is five to seven percent.
Five to seven percent. 👀
That means for roughly every twenty proposals a seller spends time building, pricing, formatting, and submitting, they win one. Maybe. The rest is administrative output that produces nothing except the illusion of activity.
Now layer on this: AI RFP tools are already in development and coming to market.
Berke has been in conversations with two of them. These tools respond to RFPs in three to five minutes versus the current industry average of thirty-five to forty minutes. They do not negotiate against themselves. They do not shave five dollars off the rate to "earn" the business. They use the system, hold the rate, and drive higher ADR precisely because the human instinct to discount is removed from the equation.
"The current RFP system is on life support," Valdov said. "It's gonna be gone before 2030. That's probably a 2027 evolution."
Ownership groups are already doing the math. If an AI tool is handling RFP response, the obvious question lands on every Director of Sales' desk: what exactly are the sellers doing with their time? It is not a hostile question. It is a structural one. And the honest answer, for most teams right now, is that they are reacting to a firehose of inbound volume, leaving no bandwidth to actually prospect.
"I'm inundated replying to RFPs. I can't even do this," one DOS told Berke recently. That is not a personal failure. It is a system design problem. And the system is about to be redesigned whether teams are ready or not.
While sellers have been focused on RFP response time as a KPI, something quieter has been happening upstream.
Non-professional planners, the executive assistant booking the leadership offsite, the HR manager organizing the annual conference, the small business owner planning a client event, are no longer starting their search with a phone call or a CVENT submission. They are going to AI search engines to build their shortlist before they contact anyone at all.
Berke has run this exercise at two conferences. She puts hotel teams in front of an AI search tool and asks them to look for their own property. Many of them do not show up. Their competitors do.
"Properties are not making that shortlist because they are not understanding where that information is being pulled from," she said. The machine is pulling from whatever content exists: FAQs, sales-focused website copy, staff profiles, solution-oriented case studies. Hotels that have invested in that content appear. Hotels that have a rates-and-dates webpage with a fifty-field RFP form do not.
Falter has been watching this play out from the direct booking side. He is seeing a measurable and growing stream of leads arriving at hotel websites with a note that simply says: "I found your hotel via ChatGPT. Looks like you'd be a great fit. Do you have availability in mid-August?"
No form. No intermediary. No commission. And the conversion rate on those leads? Thirty to fifty percent, compared to five to seven percent on a CVENT RFP.
"That should be exciting to a lot of hotels," Falter said. The commission-free, high-intent, AI-sourced direct lead is not a future scenario. It is arriving now, and the hotels benefiting from it are those that have already built content that tells the AI what problems they solve.
This is the shift Falter describes as moving from product-centric selling to problem-solving selling. Not "we have 25,000 square feet of flexible meeting space" but "here is how that space served as the backdrop for a sales kickoff that helped a company exceed its third-quarter targets." AI is crawling for E-E-A-T signals: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust. Transactional spec sheets do not feed that machine. Evidence-based outcomes do.
For years, hotel sales culture treated response time as a proxy for performance. How fast did you respond in CVENT? How many proposals went out this week? How many calls are on the board?
Berke has a two-word answer for what happens to that approach: sales activity will become irrelevant.
What replaces it is outcome-based accountability. Site tours booked. Meetings converted. Net new accounts opened. Revenue generated from proactive outreach, not reactive processing. "What did it drive?" is the question that matters. Most teams cannot answer it yet, because they have not had to.
Valdov is already recalibrating what she measures. "I wanna know how many true customer engagements have you made. How many people have you talked to?" That includes texts, emails, video messages, calls. The channel is less important than the quality of the conversation and whether it moved something forward.
The problem with speed as a metric is that it optimizes for volume. It rewards the seller who sends the most proposals, not the one who sends the right one to the right person at the right moment with the right context. When AI takes over the volume game, the sellers who built their identity around it will be left without a role. The sellers who were always trying to do something more thoughtful, and kept getting pulled back to the inbox, will finally have room to do the work they were actually good at.
"The best sellers will be the ones that feel stifled right now," Valdov said.
If you are a hotel seller walking into 2025 trying to figure out what to build, Valdov has a clear prescription: data confidence, customer understanding, and people skills.
Data confidence does not mean becoming an analyst. It means being comfortable enough with what the numbers are telling you to use them in a conversation. It means pulling intent data, reading a star report with context, understanding what a booking pattern signals about a prospect's future needs. "You've got to be able to read data like you read a room," she said.
Customer understanding means doing the research before the call—not asking a prospect what their company does, but knowing it. That means knowing who their competitors are, what their event history looks like, what cause they publicly support, and what outcomes their last meeting produced. AI can surface all of that in minutes. The seller's job is to synthesize it into a hypothesis that earns the right to a real conversation.
Berke calls this the detective skill. "If you're a sleuth online, you're gonna be amazing in sales." The days of opening with "Hi, I'm calling from Hotel XYZ, do you have any upcoming room needs?" are over. Not because it was ever a good opening, but because prospects now have a baseline expectation that if you reached out, you already know something about them. If you do not, you have already lost credibility before you said anything useful.
The third muscle, people skills, sounds obvious until you realize how much of current sales infrastructure is designed to minimize the need for them. Forms, email templates, automated follow-up sequences, digital proposals submitted into a void. All of it reduces human contact and calls it efficiency. The irony is that as AI takes over every part of that layer, the sellers left standing will be the ones who were always better at the conversation than the paperwork.
Berke adds a fourth quality she looks for in a seller: curiosity. Not general curiosity, but the specific, sustained kind that drives someone to understand a customer's world well enough to ask questions that land. "I know nothing about tax accounting software," she said, describing a recent sales call, "but within seven minutes I'm getting it." That fluency, built fast, is what earns credibility. Without it, you are a seller asking questions that your prospect could answer by looking at their own website.
There is a hotel seller somewhere right now who has spent two hours building a proposal, populated it with rates, room specs, and catering menus, uploaded it to a portal, and hit submit. The planner on the other end will receive it alongside forty-nine identical submissions from competing properties and run the whole stack through an AI comparison tool to find the best fit.
"Everyone is sending them back a digital proposal that they are uploading into some AI tool and saying, find me the best hotel," Valdov said. In that environment, the proposal is table stakes. It is not the differentiator. The differentiator is what happens before and after it.
Falter makes the case for video as the highest-leverage, lowest-cost trust tool available to hotel sellers. Not produced video. Not a polished brand asset. A thirty-second clip, shot on a smartphone, attached to a proposal or sent as a LinkedIn DM, putting a face to a name and a voice behind the pitch.
The data point that stops people: Berke asked planner Dana Nitti, directly, how many videos she had ever received from a hotel seller. Not from a brand. Not from a marketing department. From a salesperson on property, personally following up on a proposal.
None.
Not a low number. None.
"The bar is not just low," Falter said. "It's literally in the basement."
This is not a technology barrier. It is a psychological one. Sellers with 275,000 TikTok followers and who post daily on Instagram go silent the moment someone suggests they record a thirty-second video for a prospect. The fear of rejection, the concern about being too much, the worry about the imperfect lighting, all of it creates paralysis in the exact channel that would actually differentiate them.
Berke's advice: "Take thirty seconds of insane courage. Ship the email. Send the video. Put yourself out there."
Valdov has a seller on her team who closed a wedding by walking the bride through the property on a live video call. No formal tour. No polished presentation. Just a real person, showing a real space, having a real conversation. The bride booked. "They wanna see, they wanna hear, they wanna know that it's a real person," Valdov said.
That seller did not win because of speed. She won because of trust. And the two are not the same thing.
The hotel sales team of 2027 will not be the biggest. It will be the most connected, the most intelligent about its data, and the most human in how it shows up.
Berke sketches the org structure for a mid-size property: a coordinator keeping operations running, someone managing the AI RFP pipeline, one or two dedicated hunters in a pure business-development role, and a director serving more as a relationship manager and account owner. The hunters may not even be on property. They will not be pulled into lobby coverage or check-in support. Their job is to find and start conversations that become revenue.
For smaller or independent hotels, this may look different: a single person might fill multiple roles, and the same seller could be both responding to leads and proactively seeking new business. The key is to adapt the principle—focusing time and energy where it drives the highest value, relying on technology to support administrative work, and ensuring every customer interaction feels personal and proactive. No matter the team size, it's about making room for real conversations and relationship-building, rather than just keeping up with tasks.
"When we all have access to the same tools and the same information, we're all swimming in the same pond," Berke said. The differentiator is who gets out of the pond and into conversations that nobody else is having.
Falter adds the marketing dimension: the team page. Hotels spend significant money on photography of empty ballrooms and renovated lobbies. They do not show their people. A prospect asked to spend five figures on an event from a website filled with vacant spaces, and the contact form has given no reason to trust the organization behind the booking. Properties that have added a team page with genuine personality, headshots with some humanity behind them, brief profiles that tell you who you are going to work with, have seen it become one of the most-visited pages on the site.
"Every hotel has ballrooms and guest rooms and TVs and showers," Valdov said. "What they don't have is Nickole or Cory or Celeste."
Aimbridge is already building one-sheets for their sales teams, including headshots and personal details, and sending them directly to customers. The logic is simple: with more AI in the process, the human becomes the differentiator, not the venue.
Berke notes that independent hotels have a window right now. Branded properties are constrained by guidelines that limit how much personality can show up on a property website. Independents are not. They can humanize their digital presence today, before the brands catch up, and build the kind of trust signals that both AI search and real humans respond to. That window will close. It has not closed yet.
There is a through-line in everything Valdov, Berke, and Falter discussed, and it is worth naming directly.
AI will handle speed. It will handle volume. It will respond to RFPs faster than any human, hold rate better than most, qualify leads more consistently, and surface intent signals that would take a seller hours to find manually. It will do all of this without taking a lunch break, needing a pep talk, or worrying about rejection.
What it will not do is build trust.
Trust is built when a planner feels seen and when a seller references something real from their event history. When someone sends a video that took three minutes to make and proves there is a human being who actually read the brief. When the account manager picks up the phone three days after an event to ask how it went, not to upsell, just to close the loop. When the DOS whose team has been there for twenty-five years can say with genuine authority: This property will take care of you.
"People will always want to do business with people they trust," Valdov said. That has not changed. What has changed is that AI will handle everything except that, which means trust is no longer one factor among many. It is the only irreplaceable one.
The sellers who understand this are already in the best position they have ever been in. The sellers still optimizing for CVENT response time are on a clock they have not checked.
"Get out from behind the proposal," Valdov said.
The window to do something different is open. It will not stay open forever.
Dana Nitti has a nickname for ChatGPT. She calls it Janet.
Dana is the co-owner of SD Event Productions in San Diego, where the SD stands for Shannon and Dana, not the city. She plans everything from corporate meetings to Comic-Con activations, and she is exactly the kind of planner hotel sellers spend their careers trying to reach.
She recently joined Cory Falter and Celeste Berke Knisely on a LinkedIn LIVE for Sales on Tap to talk about what planners actually want from hotel sales teams. What came out of that conversation should make every seller sit up straight.
Because Janet is already making decisions about your property.
And you are not even in the room.
Before Dana sends a single RFP, before she picks up the phone, before she has any contact with a sales team … she is already researching.
She’s looking for:
Capacity charts. Photos. Distance from the airport. Walkability. The feel of the neighborhood. Whether the property matches the mission, the objectives, and the agenda of the event she is building.
"For me, it's more about the experience I'm trying to create," Dana says. "Is that venue going to meet the mission, the objectives, and the agenda of the meeting or event?"
She is not browsing a GDS.
She is prompting an AI engine she has personalized enough to give a name.
And Janet is pulling from whatever your property has made available online, cross-referencing it with reviews, comparing it against competitors, and serving Dana a shortlist before your sales team has touched a single lead.
If your property is not showing up in those results, Dana, a seasoned planner with deep local knowledge, will manually add you. She knows the San Diego market well enough to prompt Janet specifically: "Can you also give me information on this hotel?"
Most planners are not Dana.
Celeste says, "A novice planner, someone who's an executive assistant or on the marketing team who has now been sent to go find us venues, would completely skip over viable options because AI did not produce that in a search."
That executive assistant is not going to prompt Janet six different ways to surface your boutique conference property.
They are going to take the first page of results, build a shortlist from it, and move on.
If you are not there, you do not exist. The RFP never comes. You never even knew you were being considered.
Ouch.
This is not a marketing problem in the traditional sense. It is a visibility problem with a very specific cause: hotel sellers are not contributing enough content, enough answers to frequently asked questions, enough credible professional presence to feed the engines that now do the first round of sourcing.
Marketing owns the schema and the technical infrastructure. But sellers have their own role to play, and most of them do not yet know it.
Let's say your property does show up. Dana submits an RFP. A seller reaches out. What happens next?
She looks them up.
"Is there anyone in my connections who knows this person? And then, I want to see that they're professional."
Professional, in this context, is specific.
These are not unfair questions. They are the same questions a seller would ask about a planner before a site visit.
And here is the part that should sting: a weak LinkedIn profile probably will not kill the deal if the property is strong. Dana is clear on that. But it will make her cautious. It might make her ask to speak with someone else. It will absolutely color her first impression of what working with that team will feel like.
Now flip it. What if the seller's profile showed genuine expertise? Posts about the neighborhood around the property. Insights about what makes a great meeting experience in that market. Evidence that this person understands the planner's world, not just the hotel's inventory.
"You can tell that they're collaborative," Dana says. "That definitely is a plus."
Credibility is cumulative.
Every post a seller does not write, every question they do not answer publicly, every week they go dark on LinkedIn is a small withdrawal from an account that planners are quietly checking before they ever say hello.
Dana receives a lot of generic emails. She is not impressed by it.
"When you get that generic email back, you just feel like they're just checking the boxes. It only takes a few extra minutes to actually personalize your messages."
The specific frustration she names is proposals that include things she never asked for.
Templates fired off without a real conversation. Information that has nothing to do with the event she described. The implicit message those proposals convey is: "I processed your request." I did not read it.
The counter-example she describes is not complicated.
A seller who acknowledges the submission. Who asks a clarifying question. Who suggests a phone call not to close the deal, but to make sure they are hitting all the marks. Who passes an inquiry to the right territory contact and actually tells the planner they did it, rather than letting it disappear into someone else's inbox.
"I've had situations where I've sent it to someone and don't hear back from them, and I'll follow up a few days later. 'Oh, it's not my territory, but so-and-so will follow up with you.' Being that proactive, it might not be your job, but at least you are connecting the pieces."
That bar, connecting the pieces when it is technically not your problem, is apparently enough to stand out.
Which tells you everything about how low the baseline is.
Here’s another sticky situation: planners sometimes submit RFPs with almost no information, treat phone calls as an imposition, and then complain that proposals aren't customized enough.
Dana acknowledges this. She also takes responsibility for her part: "The more information I can give you, the better proposal I'm gonna get."
Not every planner thinks this way. But the sellers who build the best relationships are the ones who create enough trust early enough that planners actually want to share more.
Cory asked Dana how many times a hotel seller had sent her a personalized video message. A voice note. Anything that showed a real human being was on the other end of the inquiry.
Her answer: never. Not once that she could remember.
Not a single hotel seller, in her entire career, had done something that takes less than two minutes and costs nothing.
Celeste framed the opportunity this way: "How about sending a proposal and then having a video attached to it? This is our team, this is what we're going to do."
There's your vibe. There's your personality. There’s your differentiator.
This matters because of what AI cannot do.
Sure, Dana uses Janet for data. Capacity charts, square footage, proximity to the airport, competitive comparisons. Janet is good at all of that.
But Janet cannot tell her whether the team at a property actually cares, whether the service will match the star rating, or whether the sales manager she is about to spend six months coordinating with is someone she will enjoy working with.
"Am I going to be treated with five-star service at a three-star hotel? Or am I going to be treated like one-star service at a four-star hotel? You don't get the personality of the hotel."
That personality has to come from somewhere.
Right now, it mostly does not come at all. It is the last differentiator that AI cannot replicate, and the industry is leaving it completely untouched.
The RFP used to be the starting line.
Sellers waited for it, responded to it, chased it.
That model is not dead, but it has been quietly moved further down the process than most sellers realize.
Dana now sends RFPs to roughly half the properties she might have contacted two years ago.
The pre-research she does with Janet has already made the call on the others. "It cuts down on everyone's time," she says.
For sellers, that means the real competition is not happening in the proposal. It is happening in the sources Janet is pulling from, in the LinkedIn profile she checked after you emailed her, in the reviews her colleagues shared when she asked who had stayed there.
For properties outside Dana's home market, she widens the net a little. But she is still starting online. She is still running it through Janet first. And for the planners who are not Dana, who do not have fifteen years of market knowledge to fill in the gaps, the AI results are not a starting point. They are the answer.
The good news is that the bar is genuinely low. Most hotel sellers are not personalizing outreach. Most are not creating content that feeds AI visibility. Most have never sent a video to a planner. Dana has never received one.
That means the seller who does these things is not competing against a crowded field. They are competing against almost nobody.
As Cory put it at the end of the conversation: "The bar is so low. It's in the basement."
The sellers who figure that out first will not just win more RFPs. They will get on the shortlist before the RFP exists.
Conversations like the one with Dana do not happen by accident. Sales on Tap is a community built specifically for hospitality sellers who are tired of operating on outdated playbooks and are ready to think differently about how they find, attract, and win the right business.
Sales on Tap brings in the people who actually make buying decisions, planners, executives, and decision-makers, and asks them the questions sellers are usually too polite to ask directly. The result is the kind of intel that does not show up in a training manual.
Because knowing that Dana has never once received a personalized video from a hotel seller is worth more than a dozen generic sales decks.
If you want more conversations like this one, practical, honest, and occasionally a little uncomfortable, join the Sales on Tap community for weekly sales tips and strategies from the people who live this work every day.
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Hotel sales has a ghosting problem.
Not because planners have suddenly become rude.
Not because sellers have gotten lazy.
It is because the old playbook is wheezing. Cold emails pile up in junk folders. Voicemails vanish into the abyss. Third-party RFPs get blasted to a small army of properties, and sellers are left fighting over scraps with conversion rates that would make anyone reach for a strong drink.
That tension sat at the center of a lively Sales on Tap conversation featuring Celeste Berke Knisely, co-founder of Sales on Tap; Cory Falter, hospitality marketing strategist; and Nick Marinkovich, sales manager at Hyatt Regency Orlando.
The topic was simple on paper and a little terrifying in practice: how hospitality sellers can step out from behind the brand, show up on camera, and create demand before the RFP even lands.
Nick has become a standout example of what that looks like. He is not waiting for prospects to stumble onto a hotel website and send a generic inquiry. He is building familiarity, trust, and a memorable presence through video, humor, LinkedIn, and personalized outreach.
Or, as Celeste put it, he is doing what many sellers avoid because “we fear being judged and what if it’s silly?”
Turns out, silly might be exactly the point.
Before Nick leaned into video and a more visible personal brand, his approach looked like what many hotel sellers still do every week: pull lists, study need dates, track history, identify contacts, send emails, make calls, leave voicemails, repeat.
It was organized. It was familiar. It was also increasingly hit or miss.
Nick described that routine like this: “It was really just compiling data, a list, figuring out when we needed to fill dates, who we needed to reach out to, what that ideal client was, and then just the old school method of emailing and trying to get ’em on the phone.”
There is nothing wrong with structure. The issue is that structure alone does not cut through a crowded market. Orlando, where Nick sells, is packed with competitors. Plenty of destinations are. When every seller is working from the same outreach script, everyone starts sounding like a hold music playlist: technically there, emotionally forgettable.
Nick made the deeper problem even clearer: “When you have that solely as your approach it’s a toss up because if you hit the person at the right time, at the right place, it’s almost guessing on your part.”
That is the trap.
Traditional outreach is not useless.
It is just no longer enough on its own. It creates activity, but not always momentum. It fills a calendar, but not necessarily a pipeline. In too many cases, it turns sellers into professional chasers.
And nobody gets into hospitality because they dream of becoming a full-time inbox pest.
You never walk up to someone at a networking event and open with a sales pitch.
Yet that’s exactly what most digital outreach sounds like:
Connect and pitch.
Quick question.
Just bumping this up.
Buyers have seen this movie. They know how it ends—delete, ignore, maybe block.
Nick flipped the script by replacing pitching with familiarity. His content lets people meet him before they need him. As he put it, the goal is to “build the rapport before they even send you an RFP.”
That changes everything.
When prospects already know you, “it is no longer a transactional conversation… it becomes this partnership.”
Same hotel. Same market. Different energy.
This is why personal branding isn’t vanity—it’s pre-suasion. It lowers resistance before the sales process even begins and makes you the differentiator in a sea of similar venues.
And the tool? It’s not your brochure.
As Cory said: “Your phone is… one of the best sales tools.”
Nick’s content isn’t polished—it’s human.
Sometimes it’s costumes.
Sometimes it’s a Valentine’s bit.
Sometimes it’s him failing at sushi.
“It’s a little crazy… but it’s funny,” he said.
And that’s the point.
Stiff content gets ignored. Personality gets remembered.
Humor isn’t fluff—it’s recall. In a crowded market, being memorable is a competitive edge.
Buyers scroll fast. A seller who can make them pause, smile, or feel something has already won step one: attention.
Celeste says, “You can no longer rely on one single channel to generate leads.” Your presence has to travel—and great content does exactly that.
Nick shared that people started asking for him at the hotel before he ever spoke to them.
They already knew him.
That’s the shift.
By the time an RFP comes in, the shortlist is often already forming. Sellers who show up early—through content, engagement, and visibility—have the edge.
“I’m trying to reach ’em before it even happens,” Nick said.
Smart.
Because if buyers don’t know you, they can’t shortlist you.
If they don’t remember you, they won’t choose you.
And if all they see is a generic property page? You’re just another ballroom with decent carpet.
No big budget? No problem.
“Nobody is saying it has to cost you a dime,” Celeste said. “Most people have a smartphone.”
That’s enough.
Send a quick video walkthrough.
Introduce your team.
Record a 30-second message with a proposal.
Do something different.
Nick once created a custom, France-inspired experience for a prospect choosing between Orlando and France. He didn’t win that deal—but he won the relationship. The planner told him he’d be first up next time.
Not every effort closes today. Some create tomorrow’s win.
And as Nick said, even without immediate ROI, you build relationships where “they’re not gonna ghost you.”
That alone is a massive upgrade.
Talking about your hotel is easy.
Talking about yourself? That’s where most sellers freeze.
But as Celeste put it, “We can’t hide behind our company anymore.”
Buyers trust people, not logos.
AI surfaces individuals, not just brands.
Referrals go to humans.
Nick said: “You don’t necessarily have to dress up in a costume… but you can show who you are.”
That’s the assignment.
You don’t need to start with posting.
Start with showing up.
“Comment… share… it doesn’t have to be a big step,” Nick said.
Celeste’s tip: search a keyword, filter by posts, and join conversations already happening.
Cory’s rule: don’t just like ... comment.
Because liking a post is like waving at someone across the room.
Commenting? That’s starting a conversation.
And conversations build visibility, credibility, and eventually—pipeline.
Creativity in sales isn’t fluff—it’s leverage.
Nick’s approach improves conversations, builds recall, and shortens sales cycles. That’s real impact.
And if you need a business case, look at the cost of doing nothing.
Lost RFPs.
No responses.
Zero differentiation.
That’s your cost of inaction.
Nick summed it up perfectly: “I want to have every avenue… I want to try it.”
That’s the mindset that wins now.
This isn’t about becoming an influencer.
It’s about becoming known.
Nick blends personality, credibility, and proactive outreach. He doesn’t abandon fundamentals—he amplifies them.
“Everybody has a unique value… so use that.”
Because in today’s market, the sellers who stand out aren’t shouting louder.
They’re simply easier to remember.
And in hospitality, that’s what fills rooms.
Hotel sales is a pressure cooker. Need dates stare you down. RFPs land incomplete and somehow still “ASAP.”
Leadership wants more prospecting, more productivity, more results (preferably yesterday).
Now add AI to the mix.
Some sellers are excited. Others are suspicious. A few are quietly hoping it goes away.
It’s not going away.
In a recent Sales on Tap session, co-founders Celeste Berke Knisely and Cory Falter sat down with two directors in the trenches, Kayoko Cameron, Director of Sales at the Coeur d’Alene Resort, and Zodella Ramos, Director of Sales at the DoubleTree Denver Cherry Creek, to unpack what AI actually means for hotel sales teams.
Spoiler: It’s not the robot apocalypse. It’s a wake-up call.
Everyone’s stretched thin. That’s the truth.
Kayoko says, “Everyone’s working with less time in the day, it seems like.”
The RFP example she shared says it all. A group inquiry came in, with barely any information. No website. No context. Just a name and a date.
Pre-AI? That’s 30–45 minutes of digging before you even make the call.
Now? “I was able to, in probably five to ten minutes, learn a lot more about the group than I would’ve prior to AI.”
She asked the tool to summarize the organization, past destinations, and even average room block behavior. By the time she picked up the phone, she wasn’t guessing. She was leading.
That’s not magic. That’s efficiency.
AI isn’t changing the need for research. It’s collapsing the time it takes to do it.
Let’s address the elephant in the banquet room.
Can AI replace hotel sellers?
Zoella says, “I just believe in people. I don’t think it’s possible.”
Hospitality runs on connection. Contracts are signed because someone feels understood. Conferences are rebooked because a planner trusts the team behind the scenes.
AI can generate a proposal. It can’t walk a planner through a site tour and read the room.
Kayoko says, “AI can help us with forecasting the future based on what we provide facts from our past… but that’s no guarantee.”
AI predicts. Humans decide.
It’s a tool. A powerful one. But it doesn’t carry 50 years of property knowledge like Kathy at Coeur d’Alene. It doesn’t know the unspoken politics of a corporate board. It doesn’t feel when a deal is about to slip.
The future isn’t AI versus sellers.
It’s sellers who use AI versus sellers who don’t.
Here’s where things get interesting.
Cory pointed out something many teams are already feeling: “It’s gotten really transactional.”
Third-party channels. Blind RFP blasts. Fewer conversations. More paperwork.
Ironically, AI might be what pushes us back toward real selling.
If administrative tasks shrink, if proposals are 90% done before you touch them, then where does your time go?
Back into prospecting. Back into relationships. Back into strategy.
Celeste sees it coming: “I do think we’re at this precipice that things are gonna change.”
Some management companies are already testing roles dedicated to outbound-only business development. No RFP babysitting. No reactive selling. Just hunting.
That’s old-school sales, with new-school intelligence behind it.
Here’s the thing: everyone talks about prospecting. Few teams measure what it actually produces.
Power hours. Activity quotas. Call counts.
But those activities can be… inflated.
Celeste challenged the room:
If we want prospecting, why aren’t sellers incentivized on self-generated business?
Instead of rewarding 80 calls a week, what if we rewarded $50,000 in new outbound-driven revenue?
AI changes this conversation. Because now sellers can:
Kayoko’s playbook is simple and brilliant: “Pick my top five accounts… put them into AI and say, give me five more companies like this.”
That’s not random calling. That’s intentional expansion.
This is the part that should get every hotel’s attention.
Planners are using AI.
They’re rate-checking proposals. They’re asking for the top venues in a region. They’re building shortlists before they ever submit an RFP.
And if your hotel isn’t showing up?
You don’t exist.
Cory broke it down into something AI cares deeply about: credibility signals.
AI prioritizes experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. Not pretty ballroom photos. Not generic copy.
Trust.
That means:
As Cory said: “People are building trust, not bricks and mortar.”
Independent hotels, take note. You have more control over this than the brands do.
Zoella says, “AI is the Money Penny to your James Bond.”
You’re still 007. You’re still walking into the room, closing the deal, and reading the planner’s body language.
But now you’ve got backup.
Smarter research. Faster turnaround. Sharper targeting. More confidence for new sellers. Better strategy for veterans.
And maybe—just maybe—less time drowning in busywork.
AI isn’t here to replace hotel sales.
It’s here to expose inefficiencies.
It’s here to reward credibility.
It’s here to amplify sellers who are willing to experiment.
The question isn’t whether AI will change hotel sales.
It already has.
The real question is: will you treat it like a threat … or use it like a weapon?
Join Sales on Tap, our free community built for hotel sellers who want practical AI tools, smarter prospecting strategies, and real talk from people in the trenches. Monthly sessions. Actionable prompts. Zero fluff.
Grab your seat. Bring your questions. Let’s build your pipeline. Join us below.
No. In fact, independent hotels may have an advantage.
Most AI tools are accessible and affordable. What matters more than budget is input. Sellers who feed AI strong account data, past performance, and clear prompts will get sharper insights. Independent properties also control their messaging, testimonials, and case studies more directly, which strengthens the credibility signals AI prioritizes.
Start small and practical.
Use AI to:
Don’t try to automate everything. Replace one 30-minute research task with a 5-minute AI-assisted version. Build confidence from there.
Unlikely. It will accelerate them.
AI shortens the learning curve. New sellers can research accounts faster, understand industry context, and draft stronger communications earlier in their careers. The human side of selling—relationship building, negotiation, reading nuance—still requires experience and emotional intelligence.
AI enhances judgment. It does not replace it.
AI turns reactive gaps into targeted outreach.
Instead of blasting emails when occupancy dips, sellers can:
Need dates stop being panic moments and become precision opportunities.
Strengthen your credibility footprint.
AI pulls from signals that demonstrate expertise and trust:
If your digital presence lacks depth, AI has nothing to work with. Visibility is no longer just SEO. It’s proof.
Hotel sales isn’t just about charm and a firm handshake anymore.
It’s about translating mounds of complex data into real revenue.
Celeste Berke Knisely and Cory Falter of Sales on Tap sat down with Nick Horgan from Amaze Insights to unpack why hotel sales data often gets stuck in spreadsheets, and how to finally turn it into profit.
Turns out, just having data isn’t enough. Knowing what to do with it is where the magic (and margin) happens.
“Most hotels have a sales team. People outside the industry are like, what are they selling?” Celese said.
And that’s the heart of the problem.
Hotel sales cover everything from group bookings and catering to corporate travel and citywides.
But without unified visibility across all that chaos, even the best teams are guessing.
Nick Horgan explained the tech headache succinctly: “You may have Hiltons, Marriotts, Hyatts, independents, all using different sales systems.”
So Amaze Insights steps in to normalize all that fragmented data across an entire portfolio. “We provide the data in a way that is easy to understand and really action,” he said.
Because pace and productivity? They aren’t just buzzwords, they’re lifelines.
The bigger issue?
Too many hotel teams are flying blind. “What you absolutely can’t have is no idea what’s happening and then you’re trying to adjust your strategy to meet it,” Nick warned.
Without the right insights, you’re not making strategy. You’re just reacting.
For years, hotel sales teams leaned heavily on revenue management to fill gaps, and when that failed, they dropped rates or turned to OTAs.
According to Celeste, that is not a long-term profitable strategy.
Today, the game is changing. Sales teams can finally see where their holes are six months in advance. So instead of waiting for the next government contract to disappear, they’re proactively going outbound, with AI doing the heavy lifting.
Celeste broke it down: “We’ve done this with customers. Diving into AI to attack need periods… With the help of GPTs, you can take action immediately.” We’re not talking about vague inspiration here. We’re talking targeted prospect lists, talk tracks, and CRM referrals that translate into real bookings.
Still, too many teams live week-to-week. “The industry lives and dies by the report that comes out every week, the STAR report,” Celeste said. That’s like driving with your eyes glued to the rearview mirror.
Hotel sales suffer from what Celeste calls “knee-jerk reactions.” Too many decisions are made in crisis mode, when what’s really needed is a long-game strategy.
“You’ve got ownership, banks, ops, and everyone pulling in different directions,” she said. “It’s a hamster wheel.”
Her prediction? A divide between the “doers” (RFP responders, site visit hosts) and the “hunters,” sellers focused on long-term relationships and business development. It’s the only way to balance today’s chaos with tomorrow’s pipeline.
Nick added, “If you’re responding to a lot of RFPs that you’re not going to get… the meeting’s only happening once. So if it’s showing up in eight different systems, that’s $800,000 of phantom revenue.” No wonder conversions suffer.
Data is only valuable when paired with execution. As Nick reminded us: “Even if we spoon-feed you exactly what’s happening… you still have to have the team that’s going to execute.”
Nick shared a killer real-world story: “I heard someone say, ‘We used to spend six hours on a Sunday night getting ready for that meeting. Now I just pull up the tool live in the meeting.’” That kind of time savings isn’t just about productivity — it’s about life. “You’re making their lives better because they’re now with their family,” he added.
Celeste echoed that with her own recent win. “I was in Whistler with a team and we did a 2-day workshop on how to find $100K in new business.” No fluff. No vague goals. “They came up with names, companies, emails, talk tracks… all from using GPT tools and smart prospecting. That’s data in action.”
And what’s the best part? These weren’t theoretical plans. “They can implement immediately,” she said. It’s no surprise senior leadership is all over it, because it’s real strategy tied to real results.
Of course, none of this would matter without the human element. Sales (even tech-powered, data-informed hotel sales) is still a people game.
Nick, ever the self-deprecating connector, laughed: “I’m in sales because I love solving problems, not because I love actually selling.” He spends just as much time helping peers navigate PMS, revenue tools, and training as he does talking about Amaze Insights.
That’s why his referrals work. “I’ve put in my time planting those thank-you seeds,” he said. The payoff? “Slowly at first… and then very, very fast.”
Celeste took it further: “You get to a point in your career where you realize all the deposits you’ve made… start to come back.” But it doesn’t happen passively. You have to decide: Do I want to be here?
If so, that means building community, not just coasting in the background.
Referrals are fantastic. But, as Cory pointed out, they’re not scalable. “The only thing to scale business is proactively and going outbound.”
And that’s the big takeaway here. You can have every report and dashboard under the sun. But if your sales team isn’t using them to create strategy, build relationships, and actually sell, you’re just buying business, not building it.
So no, hotel sales isn’t room service. You don’t sit back and wait for it to arrive. You suit up, plug in, analyze the insights, and go hunt.
Because in 2026, the hospitality market isn’t giving away any easy wins.
Stay sharp. Stay human. And stop spending your Sundays in spreadsheets.
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and peer insight that turn data into deals.
If outbound sales still feel optional, the numbers disagree.
When sales discovery expert and Sales on Tap co-founder Celeste Berke talks about outbound, she is not offering opinions.
She is pointing to results.
According to internal data from a large management company she works with, opportunities from prospecting or that are self-generated by sellers close at a 70 percent win rate.
Compare that with the single-digit conversion rates associated with third-party platforms like CVENT … that gap is not small.
This is the difference between growth and stagnation.
Yet many hotel sales teams stay stuck in reaction mode. They wait for RFPs. They hope the fit is right. They fight over price once everyone else is already in the room. That is not a strategy. That is survival mode.
Outbound changes the game by putting hotels back in control.
Hotel group sales outbound fail when it lacks focus.
Celeste says, “When teams take a broad, anything-goes approach, they usually book nothing.”
Strong outbound starts with clarity.
Dig deep into these questions:
Once sellers define their ideal customer, outreach becomes targeted instead of desperate.
Teams that use booking history, smarter data, and real human judgment go after groups that are far more likely to say yes.
Here’s the undisputed truth: Outbound flips the funnel.
You are no longer waiting to be chosen.
You are choosing who to pursue.
Often, you are the first call; sometimes, you are the only call.
That advantage compounds fast.
Outbound has a reputation problem, and much of it is deserved.
Generic emails. Mass LinkedIn messages. High activity with zero results.
Celeste calls this out directly: “If outreach does not speak to something that actually matters to the recipient, it feels like noise.”
Or worse, spam dressed up as marketing.
Volume does not equal effectiveness.
Sending a thousand messages that add no value will not move the needle.
What works is relevance.
Sellers who understand why a prospect might need their hotel can lead with insight instead of a pitch. When teams track what gets responses and adjust accordingly, outbound stops feeling awkward and starts producing results.
A working outbound strategy leaves clear signals behind.
Conversations get better. Pipelines get healthier. Referrals increase when prospects redirect you to the right person.
Sellers who source their own business hit quota more often and reach accelerators faster.
Margins improve, too. Third-party RFPs come with commissions that quietly drain profitability. Outbound reduces dependency on those channels and keeps more revenue in-house.
This is what control looks like.
One of Celeste’s favorite stories started with resistance.
A seller did not want to change, they did not want to do outbound.
A few days later, that same seller booked a meeting with a new planner through focused research and a personalized message.
Momentum followed. Group bookings. Catering revenue. Real wins were tied directly to outbound effort.
Then came the headline result. A full-service independent resort generated $1.4 million in revenue that it would not have captured otherwise.
That revenue did not come from waiting. It came from action.
Outbound selling is not about cold calls or pressure tactics.
It is about intention. It is about relevance. It is about being willing to start conversations instead of waiting for permission.
Hotels stuck in the RFP cycle face a choice. Keep reacting to low-margin demand or build a strategy that creates its own opportunities.
Loyalty is built, not bought. It starts with one smart message, one real conversation, and one self-sourced deal at a time.
When outbound helps sellers win more and protects the P&L, the decision becomes practical. It becomes obvious.
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