IT & AI in Hospitality
Two practical books on hospitality technology, written by Mark Townsend — who also built Resort Manager.
They are vendor-neutral. They name no products, and that includes this one.
Why a software company is pointing you at a book that will not recommend it
Because the alternative is worse.
Choosing a property management system is a decision most owners make two or three times in a career, against vendors who do it every day. That asymmetry is the whole problem with buying hospitality software, and no amount of marketing copy on a page like this one fixes it — including ours.
A book written from more than fifteen years of building this technology, that names no products and sells none, is a better preparation for that conversation than anything we could tell you about ourselves. If you read it and conclude that Resort Manager is not the right fit for your property, the book has done its job and so have we.
Book one — IT in Hospitality
The systems behind every good stay — explained for the people who run them.
Every smooth check-in, every poolside cocktail charged to the right room, every payment that simply works is several systems co-operating in the background. When one fails, the guest notices immediately, having never known it was there.
It is a plain-English, vendor-neutral guide to those systems: what they are, how they fit together, where they fail, and what ordinary discipline prevents. Eight parts, from foundations through hardware, software, infrastructure, compliance and security, to managing IT as a business function. Every recommendation is scaled honestly by property size, so a six-room guesthouse takes what applies to a six-room guesthouse and a resort takes the rest.
Book two — AI in Hospitality
Nearly every hotel now uses AI. Almost none can point to what it has earned them.
That gap, between adoption and value, is what the second book is about. It is evidence-based rather than enthusiastic: which foundations have to be in place before a chatbot is worth deploying, which of your existing systems have quietly run machine learning for years, and which of the loudest trends are still mostly marketing.
Every claim is sourced and dated, and the trade-offs are honest — chatbots that invented policies in their hotel's name sit alongside the places the technology genuinely earns its keep. It is the companion volume to IT in Hospitality.
The templates are free
Every checklist, budget template, worksheet and decision tree from IT in Hospitality is available as a working spreadsheet, at no charge and without buying either book: annual IT audit checklists, disaster recovery planning, go-live cutover checklists, hardware and software inventories, IT budgets worked through for a small B&B, a boutique hotel and a resort, and vendor question sheets.
The go-live cutover checklist and the vendor question sheet are the two worth having open during any PMS evaluation, ours included.
Download the templates — they are hosted on our sister site alongside the full book pages.
What this has to do with Resort Manager
Directly, nothing. Neither book mentions it.
Indirectly, it is the honest version of the claim every software company on the internet makes about understanding your business. Fifteen years of designing technology for properties from five-villa hideaways to two-hundred-room resorts is what produced both the books and this software. You can read one for about the price of a coffee and judge the thinking for yourself, which is a good deal more than a testimonial page gives you.
If it leaves you with questions about your own property, ask us.
Ready to experience the benefits of Resort Manager for yourself?
Contact us today to schedule a demo or learn more about our software.