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I was on a call with a client last month, a corporate planner who books events across Europe.
Her phone buzzed three times while we were talking. She turned the screen toward me without saying anything.
Three emails. Three suppliers. Same subject line format. Same opening sentence. "We are the leading destination management company in Barcelona."
She deleted all three before I picked my coffee back up.
I asked her what would have made her stop scrolling.
She did not say a better price or more years in business.
She said she needed help building the report her CEO expects after every trip.
Photos, feedback, numbers, something that proves the spend was worth it.
Every DMC she has ever hired runs the ground logistics fine. Not one has offered to help with that report.
She was not missing a vendor. She had five saved in her contacts already. She was missing someone who noticed the part of her job that nobody in destination management ever touches.
DMCs live with more outreach pressure than almost any category in this industry.
There is always another advisor, another planner, another market to reach. That pressure is exactly why this mistake costs more here than anywhere else in luxury travel.
The fix is not writing better adjectives about your company. The fix is finding the overlooked pressure in her job before you write a single line.
Here is where AI actually earns its place in this conversation, not as a writing tool, but as a way to find that pressure before you ever open your inbox.
For years, when I looked into a prospect before reaching out, I did what everyone does. I typed the company name into a search bar and read whatever came up. It made me sound informed. It never gave me anything worth saying.
Here is the shift that changed it for me.
Before writing to a planner or a corporate client, take whatever you can find publicly, an event recap, a LinkedIn post, an old itinerary if you have one, and paste it into ChatGPT or Claude. Then ask this instead of "tell me about this company."
"Based on this, what is one operational or reporting problem this person likely faces after an event ends, that a destination management company could help solve, but probably never advertises solving?"
That one change moves you from summarizing a company to naming a problem.
Try it on your next three prospects before you write a single line of outreach. Some answers will miss. One of them will be the sentence that gets your email opened.
Have you ever used AI to research a prospect before reaching out?
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