I always start with a document before it turns into pretty words and pictures. Here’s how it evolved: I made the doc, then got buy-in from the CEO and marketing executive. Once exec was aligned, I got feedback from my immediate product management and design team. Then I went one concentric circle out and sought feedback from our engineering leaders, making small tweaks to the strategy. The result was this final document, which I then turned into a presentation for the entire PED team.

I should have presented it at the beginning of Q2, but it ended up being closer to the middle of Q2 because that’s how long it took to get good alignment on the document.


Normally I would not include a background paragraph in this type of document. But in this case, I was advocating for a different way of working as a business as a product org, so I wanted to lay out some of my principles for how we would build and take a longer-term view. No one had ever had this conversation with the team before. I needed to plant my flag in the sand and establish that we needed to start operating beyond a quarter-to-quarter basis.

This placeholder never actually got filled in, because turns out company vision and strategy didn't really exist at ResortPass. This document ended up usurping that.


I wanted to ground this strategy doc in company objectives to show how different product areas mapped to them. There's a fifth company objective about building a great place to work — that's important but didn't feel relevant for this doc, so I left it out.


No one handed me a strategy when I got to ResortPass. All they had was a quarterly roadmap of a few bullet points. So this was me trying to synthesize and make sense of everything a few months into the job, and set a long-term strategy to move us forward.

It's also helped me manage the CEO, because before this, he wanted everything done immediately. Now he can see how I prioritize and structure initiatives, and how they tie back to the company strategy.


I introduced debatable topics as a way to say, “This is my point of view. I don’t know if anyone else shares this point of view, but I want to talk about it.” Writing them down served as a conversation starter, and in the raw document, there are a bunch of comments. We had the debates live, so I removed those comments here.


Adam Fishman

I discuss product strategy at ResortPass, including company direction and overall product and marketplace vision. 

Since inception ResortPass has been operating on a quarter-to-quarter, project-based approach to product development. This means we built for what is right in front of us and very little beyond that. Everything was a V1 and we left a lot on the cutting room floor. As an earlier-stage (pre-Series B) company in default-survival mode this made a lot of sense. It stopped making sense in early 2022 and we are now behind in our approach and capabilities.

We aspire to be a best-in-class product development organization which means we should operate with the following principles:

Work backwards from a desired, long-term vision

Be stubborn on that vision and flexible on the details of achieving it

Operate at the intersection of customer problems 

Make ResortPass a regular part of our customers’ lives. (retention & engagement)

Increase the number of new ResortPass customers. (acquire)

Grow a new flagship product in Spa (retention & monetization)

Develop the deepest partnerships with the world’s best hotels. (acquire, retain & engage)

Currently, we have two distinct business units (Marketplace & B2B Software) with two different monetization models. Each has a distinct vision and strategy but the future of both is intertwined and as such we must have an overarching, unifying multi-year vision that brings the two together.

ResortPass delights guests by powering the next generation of amenity bookings across the globe.

The ResortPass product vision tells us where we’re going - powering 

 ancillary revenue for hotels worldwide and delivering a delightful consumer experience - but it doesn’t tell us how we’ll get there.

 of our revenue from the ResortPass marketplace in the form of the marketplace commission, service fees, and transaction fees. If we assume that this continues then this would imply that the overarching focus of the business should be driving marketplace growth: acquisition, retention and monetization.

There are several key components that achieve this:

Maximizing the amount of high-quality supply on the marketplace. (availability)

Maximizing consumer demand in the form of marketplace bookings. (utilization)

Maximizing hotel revenue (utilization + pricing)

 invest further in the B2B house-guest software 

 it improves upon one of the three components above.

With few exceptions, hotels should be required to use the B2B software for house guests if they are to appear in the marketplace.

If we make investments in the B2B software that don’t improve upon the marketplace we should charge hotels a fee that we allow them to pass to their customers.

Option 1: Personalized + consumer centricity

Headline: Personalized, luxurious leisure.

Access unmatched, luxurious day guest experiences and the world’ leading hotels and resorts.


The easiest way for the world’s leading hotels to unlock luxurious day guest experiences.

Carol had always been a lover of luxurious hotels. Even as a kid, she would beg her parents to take her to fancy hotels and restaurants in her home town, and that love only grew as she got older. Now that she’s in her 40’s she’s had the opportunity to travel and stay in some of the most prestigious hotels in the world. She often looks at the Instagram feeds of some of her city’s hotels as a way to sneak a few minutes of escape into her intense day job.


One day, while browsing the Insta feed of the William Vale Hotel, Carol stumbled upon a feature that she had never noticed before: day access. She couldn't believe it - the William Vale is one of the most luxurious hotels in Brooklyn and being a local she’d never had an occasion to stay there. Now she saw she could access all the amenities of the hotel without having to be an overnight guest.

She clicked on the link and was whisked away to a site she’d never seen before, ResortPass. Even though it was on a new site she loved how easy it was to navigate the various options on their beautifully designed page. She saw a video tour of the pool, that same instagram feed she’d come from, and a note that they only had a few pool passes remaining for this weekend. Excited at the prospect of experiencing her favorite hotel in a new way, Carol booked her day access to the pool, lunch, and added the Spa to her favorites to remind her to book that later. Checkout was seamless and worked just like the best travel experiences she’d booked in the past with 

 exception. ResortPass encouraged her to invite her friends along and each of them would get 10% off a future booking. She sent the invite to three of her favorite girlfriends via text and then got message that they had booked too.

When she and her girlfriends arrived at the hotel on Saturday they headed to the Concierge desk which is what the instructions in the app she had downloaded told her to do. The concierge tapped one button on her iPad and welcomed the Carole King party to the hotel, thanked them for their booking via ResortPass and whisked them away to the pool just like they were an overnight guest. This felt so glamorous and she had never experienced the William Vale during the daytime before, and it felt like she was discovering a whole new side to it.

They spent the day lounging by the pool, enjoying the delicious food that was delivered to them by the attendant and even took a quick look at the spa that she had saved on ResortPass. When they felt like ordering a drink they were able to do it right inside the ResortPass app.  It was everything she had ever wanted in a hotel experience, without the added cost of an overnight stay. Carol felt like she had discovered a hidden gem on ResortPass.

After her day at the hotel, Carol returned home feeling rejuvenated and refreshed. She couldn't stop raving about her experience to her friends and family, telling them all about the amazing amenities she had access to during her day visit through ResortPass. It had truly been a game-changer for her, and she knew she would be booking day access through ResortPass at her favorite hotels again in the future.

From that day on, Carol made it her mission to seek out hotels that offered day access through ResortPass. Instead of browsing Instagram she turned to browsing the pictures via the ResortPass app instead. When a new hotel near her appeared she’d get a notification on her phone to take a look and a reminder that she’d get 10% off her next booking. It was a way for her to experience the luxury and relaxation of her favorite hotels whenever she wanted. And as she continued to explore new hotels and destinations, she knew that ResortPass would be her go-to website for booking day access. It had truly changed the way she looked at hotel stays, and she couldn't be happier about it.

[To consider: add membership option after 2nd booking – continued 10% off and reduced service fee, extended booking window, 25% off new guests, one “friend pass” per year]

In order to deliver on the vision above, or one close to it, we should focus on four pillars in our Marketplace Product Strategy.


“Empowering hotel partners to maximize guest loyalty and revenue through a holistic view of their customers and inventory.”

Meet Carlos. Carlos is the Food & Beverage Director of the Wolf Hotel in bustling Miami Beach. He oversees all of the hotel’s revenue beyond the room. He’s been growing frustrated by the disparate technology products his team has to string together to make their hotel run. None of the systems connect with each other, there are duplicate records for customers across them all, and he’s being nickel-and-dimed by fees. At a meeting of the National Food & Beverage Directors he meets Claud, who has a similar role at the Lark hotel in Pasadena.

Over a few too many drinks one night Claud goes on an excited rant about his partnership with a new technology called ResortPass Plus (RP+). Carlos is immediately intrigued. RP+ sounds like it solves all of his problems. It connects seamlessly with all of the systems that Claud uses to manage his ancillary revenue – the POS, PMS and loyalty systems and it has a real-time reporting suite that helps him adjust pricing on the fly for his amenities. He gets a complete view of his customer right down to the cup of coffee they bought at the on-premise Caffeine Shack.

This all sounds too good to be true and then Claud drops the bombshell – it’s all free. Well, it is now that they’re also offering some of these amenities to day guests via the ResortPlass Marketplace. Even better, Claud was able to set it all up himself after only a few email exchanges with the friendly folks at ResortPass and the flip of a switch (a digital switch). Claud pulls his phone out from his pocket and shows Carlos how he has turbocharged his hotel’s ancillary revenue with the ResortPass Boost Revenue system – he enters a few price ranges and the RP+ yield management system goes to work optimizing for day guest vs. overnight guest amenity bookings and pricing. It even lets him experiment with price sensitivity and shows him the results of the experiments! Since it’s connected to his Property Management System the RP+ system knows how many overnight guests he has on any given day, their prior amenity booking habits, and what sort of recommendations they should receive. He’s even able to let people book with their loyalty points!

Claud is the talk of the town at the NFBD meeting and Carlos can’t wait to get back to Miami to get that promotion by implementing the RP+ system.

In order to deliver on the vision above, and make Carlos a hero, we should focus on three pillars in our B2B Hotel Product Strategy.

Product Strategy & Roadmap | Marketplace [Allie]

July 2022 “High Level” Roadmap (Jason) [interesting, but outdated]

We believe everyone should have access to luxury, rejuvenation and escape.

By delivering access to day guest opportunities at leading luxury hotels and resorts, we make incredible hotel experiences accessible to everyone.

ResortPass Product Strategy

ResortPass (Product) Strategy

Background

Sign up to see more