Group business is climbing back toward its pre-pandemic share of hotel demand, and fall is when most group sales teams do their heaviest booking of the year. In my experience, a strong hotel group sales strategy in 2026 has less to do with team size and more to do with understanding how the segment itself has changed. Meetings are back, but they are not the same meetings we used to sell.
What a Hotel Group Sales Strategy Looks Like in a Hybrid-Work World
Group was the slowest segment to recover after the pandemic, and it came back changed rather than restored. Meetings tend to be smaller and more frequent now. Booking windows have shortened. Hybrid formats, which started as a workaround, have become a permanent fixture of how organizations plan events.
I have also noticed group’s share of total demand shifting away from the large convention hotels and toward smaller conference hotels and resorts. That shift matters for how a property positions itself and, just as importantly, for who it is actually competing against for a given piece of business. A 400-room downtown convention hotel and a 90-room boutique property are no longer necessarily chasing the same RFPs the way they might have a decade ago.
That shift is happening against a broader industry backdrop that’s turning more favorable. AHLA’s 2026 State of the Industry report projects improved opportunity for hotels this year, with the workforce expanding and guest spending on the rise. Group is riding that same current, even if it is arriving in a different shape than before.
Group buyers generally fall into two broad camps, and knowing which one you are talking to changes the entire approach. SMERF business, social, military, educational, religious, and fraternal groups, tends to be more price-sensitive, more loyal once a hotel earns their trust, and less dependent on a formal RFP process. Corporate business tends to move faster, expect a tighter response window, and care as much about meeting technology and brand standards as it does about rate. A property that tries to sell both the same way usually loses ground in both.
The Hybrid Piece Is Not Going Away
I used to think hybrid meetings were a pandemic-era compromise that would fade once travel normalized. That has not been my experience. Hybrid has stuck around because it solves a real problem for meeting planners: it lets an organization host a smaller in-person core group while still reaching a broader remote audience, at a lower cost than flying everyone in.
For hotels, that means the AV and connectivity conversation now happens earlier in the sales process, sometimes before rate is even discussed. A property that cannot speak confidently about bandwidth, streaming capability, and hybrid meeting support is at a real disadvantage with corporate buyers, even if the meeting space itself is strong.
How I Approach Winning Group Business Without a Large Sales Force
A hotel does not need a big sales department to compete for group business. It needs a disciplined, repeatable process. Here is roughly how I think about building one.
- Segment honestly before chasing anything. Decide whether your property is realistically a SMERF hotel, a corporate hotel, or a genuine mix of both, based on your size, location, and meeting space, not on what you wish were true. Chasing corporate RFPs from a property built for SMERF groups tends to waste effort on both sides.
- Answer RFPs fast, every time. Thousands of RFPs still move through the system every week despite everything that has changed about how they are sourced. I have found that a same-day response, even a partial one, wins more business than a technically perfect proposal that arrives three days later. Speed signals how a group will actually be treated once they arrive.
- Lean on third-party planners as an extension of the team. Firms like Helmsbriscoe, Maritz, and Conference Direct can deliver a steady stream of qualified leads to a property that cannot staff a full sales department year-round. I have found hotels get more out of these relationships when they treat the agent as a partner worth investing time in, not a middleman to tolerate.
- Build relationships before you need them. Establishing a relationship with the local Convention and Visitors Bureau, brand-level meeting sales representatives, and association and corporate meeting planners tends to pay off months later, often when a 2027 booking decision is already being made. Waiting until demand is obviously strong to start these relationships means starting from behind.
- Track booking pace by segment, not just in aggregate. Shorter booking windows mean a pace report that lumps all group business together can hide a real problem in one segment while another looks perfectly healthy. I like to watch SMERF and corporate pace separately, since they tend to move on different timelines.
- Let automation carry the repetitive work. AI tools that handle RFP intake, lead scoring, and routine follow-up tend to free a small sales team to spend its time where a relationship actually matters, on the phone or in front of a planner, rather than buried in administrative back-and-forth.
Why This Segment Deserves More Attention Than It Gets
A hotel group sales strategy does more for a property than fill a block of rooms on a given weekend.. It tends to book further out than transient demand, which gives a revenue manager something stable to forecast against. It also creates compression that supports rate integrity across the rest of the house, since a property that is partially sold out from group has less incentive to discount the rooms that remain.
Owners who treat group sales as a line item to staff only once demand is obviously strong tend to lose the segment right as it becomes valuable again. Rebuilding a sales function, and the relationships behind it, generally takes longer than owners expect. The hotels I have seen come out ahead this cycle are the ones that kept a presence in the group market even through the slow years.
A Few Practices That Tend to Move the Needle
- Keep relationships with CVB and travel trade contacts active year-round, not just during your own busiest RFP season.
- Know your property’s realistic SMERF-versus-corporate mix before building a sales plan, not after.
- Protect rate integrity even as booking windows shrink and buyers push for faster turnaround.
- Staff group sales ahead of demand recovery rather than after it, since the relationships behind the segment take months to rebuild.
- Be ready to speak knowledgeably about hybrid meeting capability early in the conversation, not as an afterthought once rate is on the table.
Frequently Asked Questions
SMERF stands for social, military, educational, religious, and fraternal groups. These buyers tend to be more price-sensitive and less RFP-driven than corporate group business, and they are often loyal once a hotel earns their trust.
Meetings have generally become smaller and more frequent, booking windows have shortened, and hybrid formats have stuck around as a permanent option rather than a temporary substitute for in-person meetings.
Not necessarily. A disciplined process, fast RFP response, active third-party agent relationships, and consistent CVB engagement, can compete effectively without a large in-house sales department.
Same-day acknowledgment, even before a full proposal is ready, tends to matter more than a perfectly polished response sent days later. Buyers are usually comparing several properties at once, and speed signals how the group will be treated during the actual event.
These firms source group business on behalf of meeting planners and route qualified leads to hotels, functioning best as an extension of a property’s sales effort rather than a competitor to it.
Group demand has been climbing back toward its pre-pandemic share of total hotel demand, though the segment itself looks different than it did before, with smaller average meeting sizes and shorter booking windows.
Where I Would Start
Winning group business in a hybrid-work world comes down to knowing your real segment, responding faster than the hotel down the street, and treating relationships as something you build before you need them, not after. If you are rebuilding a group sales function or rethinking how your property competes for this business, I work directly with owners and operators on exactly this kind of strategy. Let’s talk.
Every week I share what I am seeing across group, corporate, and leisure demand, along with the strategies that are actually working for owners and operators right now. If you want that insight before your competitors do, subscribe to the newsletter. It is free, and it is the fastest way to stay ahead of what is coming next in this segment.
