109,000 Travel Planners Online - Is Your Sales Team Still Doing Cookie Drop-Offs to Drive Revenue?

Send this to your VP of Sales & Marketing! (hehe) If you're relying solely on in-person sales tactics like dropping off "cookies" and "visiting local clients" you're missing out on a growing segment of your audience that simply isn't in the office anymore. Let’s be real—your buyers are now working remotely, and the digital shift is here to stay.

If you’re not meeting them where they are, you’re leaving revenue on the table!

The Remote Revolution in Hospitality

As we heard from Caleb Rice of JC Resorts on the Sales Edge Podcast , the shift to remote work isn’t just affecting sellers—it’s changing how buyers interact with the industry. Caleb shared how he transitioned from working on property to a fully remote sales role, reflecting a broader change in hospitality that SOME companies are starting to adopt.

Not only are sales teams working remotely, but many of their customers are too.

Meetings used to be face-to-face, with planners in corporate offices, but now those planners are logging in from home offices across the country (ps. plug for your team to be camera on too).

What’s more, many hospitality sales teams are still clinging to old-school strategies like cookie blitzes, local drop offs, or visiting vacant office buildings hoping to find a decision maker. How do I know this? WE SEE YOU POSTING ABOUT THIS ONLINE. I don't know about your hotel team, but my teams would "strategically" call on accounts that they knew were close to booking so they could check it off as a WIN/Revenue booked from the blitz.

In 15 ish years of working with hospitality teams, I've yet to see one piece of actual business come as a result of the hours and days of efforts of a blitz. Let alone the cost. (YEAH - I SAID IT).

So why aren't you thinking more strategically as in "ow do I get my team to reach thousands of people in the matter of hours" Is it lack of time? Is it lack of know how? Or is it not a priority as hotels are still "making money"?

LinkedIn: A Promise Land of Potential Buyers

Hospitality sales leaders who ignore LinkedIn do so at their own future demise. It is just a matter of time before more and more people start creating content and engaging with your potential buyers.

Consider this: LinkedIn has become a major platform where meeting planners, event coordinators, and decision-makers gather, and the numbers speak for themselves:

• 33,000 meeting planners are active on LinkedIn.
• 250,000 event planners are leveraging the platform.
• 16,000 corporate event planners are on LinkedIn.
• 109,000 travel planners can be reached online.

These are thousands of potential customers who are online daily, engaging with their networks and making decisions. Yet, if your team is solely focused on outdated, in-person tactics, you’re missing out on reaching this massive audience - at scale.

You HAVE to have a plan to start.

See this 250k below? With a few clicks of a button I can show your team HOW to narrow this list down to a manageable target prospecting list - let's say 100. How about that for an INSIDE BLITZ?

Why Old-School Tactics Don’t Work Anymore

Relying on outdated methods like dialing for dollars or calling all past clients just don't work - you are limited to the information you have and NOT what you don't know. Here’s the problem: your buyers aren’t in the office. Many are working remotely, managing events, and making key decisions from their homes. As Caleb pointed out in the podcast, we need to meet buyers where they are—and today, that place is often digital.

Even worse, these traditional tactics aren’t just inefficient—they're a waste of resources. You could be spending hours on travel and visits, hoping to meet a handful of buyers, while a single post or message on LinkedIn could reach thousands in the same amount of time.

Adapt or Get Left Behind

The future of hospitality sales isn’t about who can shake the most hands or book the most coffee meetings—it’s about who can adapt to the digital age. If your team isn’t leveraging LinkedIn to connect with planners and decision-makers, you’re already behind. The pandemic changed the way people work, and those who have embraced this shift are thriving. Those who haven’t? Well, they're struggling to keep up.

So, let me ask you this: Is it really worth your team's time to rely on 1:1 visits as the sole source of prospecting? Or are you ready to embrace the digital platforms like LinkedIn that allow you to reach thousands at a time?

The choice is yours. Focus on handing out the cookie....OR....go after all the cookie manufacturers and their vendors - online.

Hi. I'm Celeste, a former RDOS turned Sales Trainer who works with hospitality teams and hospitality tech companies who are selling into hotels to uniquely understand the digital shift, how to approach it and turn a strategy into revenue. Shoot me a DM if you are looking for something NEW as far as workshops/conference sessions vs. the same old same old.

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