Multichannel sequences
Hotel group sales: how to win corporate offsites by email
By Asen Levov, co-founder of Sellinger. Reviewed by Viktorio Shopov. Published . Last updated . 8 minute read.
Win corporate offsites by writing a short letter to the person who organises them: who you are, one offer, and one question asking for dates and headcount. Hotel Pirin, a related party hotel, emailed 5,499 contacts, drew 163 replies and 23 concrete group inquiries, and traced five companies from a dated letter to a reservation. Time the offer to the season and make the last note forwardable.
Group business is the steady money in a hotel's calendar, and the hardest to find. Team offsites, trainings, annual meetings, Christmas parties and January kick offs are booked by people who do not search for hotels the way a family does. They are found one company at a time. This post draws on one hotel's campaign to show a repeatable method, with its numbers, its limits and what did not work.
A note on the source. Hotel Pirin is owned by a co-founder of Sellinger, which runs these agents on its own hotel. Many replies in the threads are the owner's. This is an operator's own data, not an independent customer's, and it is one hotel in one season. The prices, rates and revenue are not published here.
Who books a corporate group?
Four kinds of contact appear in the data.
| Audience | Why they matter |
|---|---|
| HR and office managers | Organise team events, trainings and year end parties |
| Heads of departments | Run offsites and kick offs |
| Event agencies | Book venues for clients |
| Schools, clubs and associations | Camps, trips and annual gatherings |
At Hotel Pirin the agent wrote to HR and office managers, Bulgarian companies, schools, event agencies and associations, and in October also to companies in North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Albania. The audience mattered more than the letter, as the table below shows.
Which audiences replied?
| Audience | Contacts | Replied | Reply rate | Companies with a reservation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HR and office managers, verified list, July | 656 | 102 | 15.5% | 1 confirmed |
| Bulgarian companies, decision maker lists, August to October | 1,395 | 25 | 1.8% | 1 confirmed (probable link), 1 pending |
| Bulgarian companies, second list in August, plus 13 ski clubs | 452 | 14 | 3.1% | 1 confirmed |
| Event agencies | 35 | 6 | 17.1% | 0 |
| Schools | 2,248 | 6 | 0.3% | 0 |
| Companies in four other Balkan countries, October | 649 | 5 | 0.8% | 0 |
| All B2B contacts | 5,499 | 163 | 3.0% | 3 confirmed, 2 pending |
Two lessons. First, reply rate and reservations did not move together: HR and office managers sent the most replies, but most had no trip to plan right away, and event agencies replied at 17.1% and produced no reservation. Second, a large list of the wrong audience is cheap noise: 2,248 school contacts produced 6 replies. Choose the audience by who books, not by who answers.
What did the letter say?
The letter was three to six sentences in Bulgarian. It had four parts: who we are (Hotel Pirin in Bansko, about two hours from Sofia), one offer (half board and spa, and a free conference room for groups), a personal line or an approved template, and one question: reply with your dates and headcount. You can see the structure in the group offer letter template.
Three details are worth copying.
- One offer. Not a menu of packages.
- One figure. The case study's rule is one figure per offer in every letter, such as the total for the stay. Several numbers made the letter harder to read.
- One question that asks for facts. Dates and headcount give the hotel what it needs to quote, and they are easy to answer in a line.
Until mid August the agent wrote each letter. From late August it sent templates the owner approved, word for word. Check the first drafts in approval mode, as the owner did.
How should the sequence run?
| Touch | Job |
|---|---|
| Day 0 | The first letter |
| Follow up 1 | A new reason to act now. In July it asked permission to send the presentation. From late August it gave a reason: the cost of a 20 person offsite worked out, or "December dates are filling" |
| Follow up 2 | The last note: "I don't want to be a bother, so this is my last note on this topic." It restated one offer and asked for two facts, period and headcount |
Which touch earned the inquiry? The first letter found the need: it earned 52 of 138 human first replies and 13 of the 23 concrete group inquiries. Follow up 1 drew the most replies, 64, but mostly polite ones, with 5 inquiries. The last note drew 16 replies and 4 inquiries, and one of them, forwarded inside a company, became a confirmed booking. Seventeen replies forwarded the letter to a colleague. Our post on email sequences and cadences shows how to build the same shape.
When should the offer go out?
Offers followed the season. An autumn offsite from July. Christmas parties and January kick offs from late September. Winter camps once the schedule was known. Group buyers plan one to three months ahead, so write before the decision, not during the month. A letter about a December party in December is too late.
What happened after a reply?
The owner or his reply desk offered dates and rooms by email or phone and quoted within 1 hour to 2 days. People closed the bookings. The reservations agent, which answers guests who write in, created no reservation, and groups, agencies and Booking.com messages go to staff by design. Of the five companies traced to a reservation, three were confirmed, with 106 room nights across five reservations, and two were pending. The pending ones are not counted as won.
What did not work?
- A big, wrong list. Schools: 2,248 contacts, 6 replies.
- Reply rate as the target. The HR list replied at 15.5% and the confirmed booking from it was one company.
- Several figures in one letter. The campaign cut to one.
- A letter that cannot travel. A last note that depends on earlier letters is hard to forward. The fix was a note that stands alone.
- LinkedIn. The hotel also tried LinkedIn with 872 office managers. The case study covers it under what did not work.
How would you run it yourself?
- Make a list of 500 people who book, from verified sources, not 5,000 who might.
- Write the one offer, the one figure and the one question.
- Schedule the first letter two to three months before the season.
- Plan two follow ups, the second a standalone last note.
- Decide who answers a reply and how fast. Quote within a day.
- Read every reply, and count companies, not only contacts.
Our playbook for group sales cold email for hotels gives the configuration for an agent, and the industry page for hotels and hospitality lists related tools.
Does it work for other venues?
The pattern is not specific to hotels. Anyone who sells a venue or a service to organisers can use it: a restaurant with a private room, a conference centre, a farm with an events barn, a coach company, a catering firm. What carries over is the sequence of decisions: pick the people who book, write one offer, ask for the facts you need to quote, time the letter to the season and make the last note travel. What does not carry over is the numbers. A hotel in a ski town with a spa and a free conference room has an offer that fits an autumn offsite. Your offer needs its own reason.
Read the result at its true size. One hotel, one season, 5,499 contacts, five companies. It is enough to show that the method can open group business, and not enough to promise your reply rate. Run a small first wave of 300 to 500 contacts, count replies and inquiries per touch, and scale only the audience that produces inquiries, not just replies.
A checklist
- [ ] I know who books groups at the companies I write to.
- [ ] The letter has one offer, one figure and one question.
- [ ] It goes out two to three months before the season.
- [ ] The last note stands alone and can be forwarded.
- [ ] A person quotes within a day of an inquiry.
- [ ] I count companies and inquiries, not just replies.
Common questions
Who books corporate offsites?
How many letters should a hotel send?
Is this a typical result?
Should the letter state a price?
Can an agent close the booking?
How Sellinger helps
Read how it works on See Sellinger for hotels and hospitality, or see a real campaign in Read the Hotel Pirin case study.
