How to sell to Heads of People at Hospitality companies
Heads of People in hospitality are focused on employee retention rates, which directly impact service quality and guest satisfaction. They respond when they see solutions that can enhance employee engagement and streamline onboarding processes. Understanding their unique challenges, such as high turnover in frontline roles, is crucial for making a connection.
Written and maintained by the SoloRiff team, who build outbound software and run outbound with it. The figures below are our own: we measured 548 hospitality company domains over public DNS on 2026-09-03. Last updated 2026-09-03.
What actually hurts
- high turnover in frontline roles
- inefficient onboarding processes
- low employee engagement scores
- difficulty in talent retention
The playbook
- 01
Identify recent turnover spikes
Research hospitality companies that have reported increased turnover rates in the last quarter. Use platforms like LinkedIn or industry news sites to identify these trends. Highlight how your solution can help improve retention in your outreach.
- 02
Target managers of frontline staff
Filter your list to include heads of people specifically in hotels or restaurants with a focus on frontline staff management. This will allow you to tailor your messaging to address the unique challenges faced by these roles, such as scheduling and training.
- 03
Mention specific pain points in outreach
Craft your email to address common issues like inefficient onboarding processes or low employee engagement scores. Reference recent surveys or reports that highlight these challenges in the hospitality sector to establish relevance and urgency.
- 04
Follow up after major hiring events
Schedule follow-ups after significant hiring events or seasonal peaks in the hospitality industry. This timing is crucial as companies often reassess their talent strategies post-hiring, making them more receptive to new solutions.
- 05
Ask about existing retention strategies
In your outreach, directly inquire about their current employee retention strategies. This opens a dialogue and allows you to position your solution as a complementary tool to their existing efforts, making it easier for them to see the value.
Can hospitality companies even receive your mail?
We measured the DNS of 548 hospitality companies, sampled evenly across company sizes, to see how many authenticate their own email. It matters in both directions: a domain that does not authenticate is a domain whose team is used to mail going missing — and if your own domain is in the gap, yours is the mail going missing.
Publishes a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject — the domain actually asks receivers to act on failures.
The gap is the finding: 15.6% of 1–10-person companies against 73% of the largest — 57 points apart. Small companies are where the unauthenticated domains are, and small companies are who most cold outreach is aimed at.
Where does your domain sit?
Same three lookups, run live against your domain. Nothing is stored and nothing is emailed to you.
How this was measured
Company domains were sampled within employee-count bands, then queried over public DNS for SPF (TXT at the apex), DMARC (TXT at _dmarc.) and MX. One domain per company, deduplicated. Anyone can reproduce any single row of this with dig.
DKIM is deliberately absent. A DKIM key lives under a selector that cannot be enumerated from outside the domain, so a company with flawless DKIM under a name we did not guess would be counted as having none. That would measure our guess list, not the industry.
Domains with no MX record are excluded rather than counted as failures — parked and redirect-only domains would otherwise drag every figure down and make the result an artefact of the sample.
Sampled within bands, so this describes the population of companies, not of employees: a 10-person company counts once, as does a 10,000-person one. Each band is at least 60 domains; bands below that are not published. Figures are percentages of the sample, not of the whole industry, and we publish no company names — only counts.
Measured 2026-09-03. Re-measured monthly.
The full census across every industry — sortable, with sample sizes, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
Subject lines that fit
- Improving retention in hospitality
- Streamlining your onboarding process
- Engaging your frontline staff
Questions
- Why do Heads of People in hospitality ignore cold outreach?
- Heads of People in hospitality often receive numerous outreach messages that fail to address their specific challenges, such as high turnover or engagement issues. If the message doesn't immediately resonate with their pressing needs, it is likely to be overlooked.
- What common challenges do Heads of People face in hospitality?
- They frequently deal with high employee turnover, especially in frontline roles, which affects service quality. Additionally, they need to implement effective onboarding processes to ensure new hires are engaged and productive quickly.
- How can I make my outreach relevant to Heads of People?
- Include insights or statistics about employee engagement and retention specifically in hospitality. Tailoring your message to highlight how your solution can address these unique pain points will capture their attention more effectively.
- What timing is best for reaching out to Heads of People?
- The best times to reach out are right after major hiring seasons or when turnover reports are released. These periods often prompt Heads of People to reassess their strategies, making them more open to new solutions.
Or have it run itself
SoloRiff does every step above on its own — finds the companies, finds the people, writes each of them individually, and handles the replies. Drop your URL and watch it work before you sign up for anything.
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