AI Should Give Hotel Sales Teams More Time to Be Human

Spend any time talking with hotel sales teams and a singular theme emerges: their extensive workload.

And it’s not just the client-facing stuff — it’s everything that comes along with it.

Proposals need to be built from scratch. Data gets manually entered into multiple systems. The same information gets copied and pasted across documents, emails, and platforms. Approvals need to be chased down and tracked. By the time all of that’s done, a lot of time has passed since that first inquiry came in.

Here’s the kicker: none of that is actually what hotel sales teams are supposed to be doing.

Their job is to build relationships, understand what clients need, and close deals. But a huge chunk of their day gets eaten up by admin work just to keep things moving.

And this isn’t just a hotel industry problem. According to Salesforce’s most recent State of Sales report, salespeople spend only about 30% of their time actually selling. The rest? Admin tasks and internal back-and-forth.¹

For hotels, the stakes are even higher.

Groups and events are a massive piece of a hotel’s revenue, and speed matters. Meeting planners are shopping multiple venues at the same time, and more often than not, the first property to respond with something clear and professional gets the business.

But when your team is buried in paperwork and administrative tasks, getting back to someone quickly becomes way harder than it should be.

That’s where AI enters the conversation for hospitality.

There’s a lot of talk about AI automating jobs and replacing people. But in hospitality, I think that’s missing the point entirely.

The real win here is getting time back.

AI can cut through the layers of repetitive work that have always slowed hotel sales teams down. Things like building proposals, pulling together information from different places, and drafting responses — smart tools can now handle a lot of that heavy lifting.

When that happens, everything changes.

Your sales team gets their time back.

And with that time, they can focus on what actually drives revenue: responding faster to planners, really understanding what each event needs, and nurturing the relationships that decide where the business ultimately goes.

Hospitality has always been about people. Technology should be there to support that, not replace it.

One of the risks with how AI is being talked about right now is that automation gets treated as the end goal. In service industries, it should be the opposite.

The goal of technology should be to reduce the friction so your team can spend more time creating the kind of human experiences that make hospitality stand out from everything else.

Hotels that use AI smartly stand to gain a lot.

Sure, things will run more efficiently. But more importantly, their sales teams will be able to respond faster, connect with clients in a more meaningful way, and feel more confident competing in what is already a really crowded market.

Put simply, the biggest return on AI might not be about automating tasks at all.

In an industry built on service, technology’s real job is simple: give people more room to actually deliver it.

About Mike Pavicich

Mike Pavicich is the Global Sales Vice President at SalesAndCatering.com, where he leverages over 20 years of rich experience in the hospitality industry. His professional trajectory is marked by a series of leadership roles across prestigious hotel brands, demonstrating a consistent ability to drive sales performance and revenue enhancement. Mike’s roots in the industry trace back to fundamental roles in sales and operations at distinguished establishments such as Hyatt Hotels, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, and Station Casinos.

Mike’s career trajectory shifted when he began exploring the synergistic blend of technology and hospitality. His contributions have been pivotal in advancing growth-driven solutions at leading technology firms, including Orbitz (now part of Expedia), Rainmaker (later acquired by Cendyn), and Sabre. In a recent role, he played a key part in managing the gaming markets for Priceline-Agoda. As a graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, class of 1999, Mike combines a profound understanding of the hospitality sector with a keen insight into technological innovations.

Outside the professional sphere, this industry veteran is a dedicated family man residing in Las Vegas. When not working, he relishes quality time with his wife and two teenage sons, passionately supports the UNLV Running Rebels basketball team, and contributes to the community as a volunteer youth lacrosse coach.

Connect with Mike on Linkedin

About SalesAndCatering.com

SalesAndCatering.com provides the most affordable full-featured Sales and Catering systems for hospitality.  Its STS Cloud Sales and Catering system is widely installed and engineered to give property sales teams the sales tools that help them achieve their goals. SalesAndCatering.com’s  systems are developed and supported by the company’s US-based offices. It is a trusted full-service sales and catering partner that delivers solutions via a software-as-a-service model that ensures greater client communication to streamline the sales process and maximize staff productivity. SalesAndCatering.com’s systems help hotel companies meet revenue goals through anytime-anywhere data access and integration with multiple PMS systems.  STS Cloud delivers unparalleled performance to help you thrive in today’s competitive sales environment. 

For more information, please visit salesandcatering.com.