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What a Sales Kickoff Costs Per Person When Everyone Stays Overnight

Travel ConnectsNovember 9, 20267 min read

Audience watching a keynote presentation at a conference

Short answer: a two-night, in-person sales kickoff at a Florida resort comes to about $1,850–$2,050 per attendee for airfare, two hotel nights with tax, and a full catered program, before AV, production, ground transport and speakers. Every number below comes from a published 2026 price, and the math is shown so you can swap in your own.

This is the cost companion to our SKO venue, travel and room block playbook. That post covers how to run the logistics. This one covers what it adds up to.

The worked example: 150 people, two nights

A common shape: people fly in on day one for a welcome dinner, spend day two in the general session and breakouts, and leave after breakfast on day three.

Airfare: $445. The average US domestic itinerary fare in the second quarter of 2026, per the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The full-year 2025 average was $387, so a January kickoff booked early can come in under this.
Two hotel nights with tax: about $560–$740. Two nights at $249–$329, which is the range Florida resorts publish as group "from" rates for 2026, plus about 12% in room tax (Florida's 6% state tax plus a 5–6% county tourist tax, rounded).
Food and beverage: about $845. Two dinners, two breakfasts, one lunch and one coffee break at the lowest buffet prices on a 2026 Orlando resort catering menu ($629 of food), then its 26% service charge and 6.5% tax on top.

That totals $1,847–$2,026 per person, or roughly $277,000–$304,000 for 150 people, before the lines below that every venue quotes separately.

Why the food line surprises people

On the menu, a lunch buffet reads $103. On the invoice it is about $138, because the service charge (26% at both Orlando and Fort Lauderdale resorts whose 2026 banquet menus we read) is added first and Florida sales tax is then charged on the food and the service charge together. One Orlando menu also says its service charge may rise by up to five more points. Budget F&B at about 1.34 times the menu price at a Florida resort and you will not be caught short.

F&B is also where SKOs grow without anyone deciding to grow them: an open bar after the awards dinner, a second break, a plated dinner instead of a buffet. Plated dinner entrées on that same Orlando menu run $149–$185 before the service charge.

The lines quoted separately

AV and production. In-house AV companies price equipment by the day and labor by the hour. Encore's 2026 price guide for the Tampa Convention Center lists labor starting at $135 an hour. A general session with stage, screens and a technician for a full day is quoted on its own, and on a content-heavy SKO it can rival the room block.
Meeting space. Often waived, or reduced, when the room block and F&B spend are large enough. Ask for it in the first proposal, not after you sign.
Resort fees. Some Florida resorts waive them for groups. One Gulf Coast resort waives a $75 nightly fee for groups of 10 or more rooms a night. If yours does not, add it to every room night.
Ground transport, speakers, swag and awards. These vary too much by company to put a number on without guessing, so we don't.

How this compares with the benchmarks

Two public numbers are worth knowing, mostly to explain why a resort SKO sits above them.

The federal per diem: $113 a night for lodging and $68 a day for meals in a standard US location for the year starting October 1, 2026, per the GSA. That is the floor for a business trip in an ordinary city, not a resort with a catered program.
The national hotel average: $160.54 a night for all US hotels in 2025, per CoStar's STR data. Resort group rates in Florida run well above it.
The meetings industry benchmark: Amex GBT's 2024 forecast put an internal team meeting in North America at about $638 per attendee, excluding air. That figure is total budget divided by attendees across every size and kind of meeting, and it predates 2025 and 2026 price rises. Its 2026 edition reported that 71% of planners expected costs to rise again but gave no dollar figure.

Four ways to bring the number down

Pick a shoulder-season week. One Florida resort we read prices its group rooms at $249 a night in shoulder season and $299 in premium season, a $100 difference per person over two nights.
Run Sunday to Wednesday. Another publishes $329 Sunday to Wednesday and $359 Thursday to Sunday.
Use the welcome dinner as the awards dinner. One dinner instead of two saves about $225 per person at the menu prices above, once the service charge and tax are added.
Book the block early and size it well. Attrition clauses make you pay for rooms you contracted and did not fill. Our guide to venue contracts covers the clauses to push on.

Get your own number

Send us your headcount, dates and the cities your team flies from, and we'll come back with a line-item budget built from the venues' own group proposals. There is no planning fee: the resorts pay us a commission, so you pay their price. More on how we work with corporate groups and sales kickoffs.

Get an SKO cost estimate → (mention "sales kickoff" and your headcount in the form).

Sources: airfare from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics; per diem rates from the GSA FY2027 per diem bulletin; national hotel rates from CoStar's STR data for 2025; room tax rates from the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research 2026 rate table; group room rates, catering prices and service charges from the resorts' own 2026 group and banquet pages (Hammock Beach Golf Resort, The Lodge & Club at Ponte Vedra Beach, JW Marriott Orlando Grande Lakes, Beach House Fort Lauderdale, Four Seasons Naples Beach Club); the meetings benchmark from Amex GBT's 2024 and 2026 Global Meetings and Events Forecasts; AV labor from Encore's 2026 Tampa Convention Center price guide. All read on November 8, 2026. Resort prices are "from" rates and change by date; your quote will differ.

Travel Connects is a Florida-based, full-service travel agency. FL Seller of Travel Reg. No. TI125330. CA Seller of Travel Reg. No. 2089491-50.