The meetings and events industry has always adapted to change. What we're experiencing right now, though, feels genuinely different.
A generational shift in the workforce is reshaping how business gets done. The event planners we've historically engaged with, those who valued face-to-face sales pitches, formal presentations and relationship-building over time, are increasingly being joined and replaced by a new generation of meeting professionals. They have different expectations, different communication styles and a fundamentally different relationship with their own time. And that shift is showing up in our results.
Candidly, some of our most trusted sales strategies are losing their edge.
How Event Planner Engagement is Changing
For decades, the playbook was straightforward:
- Schedule the sales call
- Host the site visit
- Invite planners to events
- Build relationships through in-person engagement
These weren't just tactics. They were the foundation of how this industry operated, and for a long time, they worked.
Today, the environment those tactics were built for looks quite different:
- Many planners are fully remote or hybrid
- Calendars are tightly controlled, and meeting fatigue is real
- Unsolicited sales calls are often ignored or deprioritized
- Attendance at traditional networking events has softened
This isn't about working harder or showing up more. It's a genuine shift in how a new generation of professionals prefers to work, and it calls for a different kind of response.
What Today's Event Planners Expect from Destination Sales Teams
The emerging generation of meeting and event planners didn't grow up waiting on hold or sitting through lengthy discovery calls. They value efficiency, autonomy and relevance. For them, every interaction needs to earn its place. Communication needs to be:
- On demand rather than scheduled
- Concise and personalized rather than broad and generalized
- Digitally accessible rather than dependent on live interaction
That reality raises a direct question for anyone in destination sales:
If event planners aren't engaging the way they used to, how do they want to be engaged?
Reframing the Destination Sales Approach
It's tempting to view the decline in traditional engagement, including fewer calls and lower event attendance, as a barrier. In reality, it may be an opportunity.
Consider what it actually means when event planners stop showing up to events or returning calls. They are not disengaging. They are sending a signal:
They prefer to access information on their own terms.
That's a meaningful signal, and an actionable one. It challenges us to evolve from being presenters of information to providers of accessible, high-value resources.
Content Marketing for Event Planners: Education Over Interruption
Here's what hasn't changed: every meeting and event planner, regardless of generation, will eventually need support. A great destination. A trusted partner. The kind of expertise that saves them time and makes them look good to their clients and stakeholders. What has changed is how and when they choose to access it.
That's where the real opportunity lies for destination sales teams. The questions worth asking:
- Are we creating content that answers questions before they're asked?
- Are we making it easy to understand our value without requiring a meeting?
- Are we visible in the digital spaces where planners are already working?
Practically speaking, that kind of support might look like:
- Short-form, highly targeted digital content
- Transparent pricing and incentive structures
- Easy-to-navigate planning tools and guides
- Thought leadership that respects time and delivers immediate value
A Strategic Shift in Meetings and Events Sales
It's worth pausing here to acknowledge that this new approach is not a criticism of the old way of doing things. The relationship-driven, in-person model built real trust and real business. What we're describing is not a replacement. It's a response to a changed environment.
And there is a practical upside worth noting. If event planners are engaging less in traditional ways, destination sales teams have an opportunity to reduce spend on costly events and travel, and redirect that investment toward smarter, more scalable digital strategies.
The Destination Sales Question Ahead
It all comes back to one question:
How does this new generation of event planners want to be educated and supported so that when they are ready to book, we are the easiest, most valuable destination sales partner to choose?
The destinations and organizations that can answer it well won't just survive this shift. They will be the ones that planners turn to first, trust most, and come back to again and again.
