The Best Place to Work May Be in the Cloud
How 35 years at Resort Data—and a willingness to keep evolving—can make a workplace worth staying for
For some people, finding a great place to work means finding the right office. For others, it may mean finding the right people, the right challenges—or, in the case of Resort Data Processing’s Director of Client Relations, Ross Moff, a combination of all three, plus a pretty spectacular view.
Moff has been with Resort Data since 1991. He joined the company after working his way through a hospitality career that included front desk, reservations and rooms division management at a resort in Vail, Colorado. When that resort changed its software to Resort Data Processing (RDP), Moff asked one of the company’s installers what it was like to work there.
The answer included a free ski pass, travel around the world and free lunch every day.
“I had to ask, ‘How do I sign up for this?’” Moff recalls.
Apparently, the answer was: Start now.
He did, joining RDP’s support department, where he spent 27 years before moving into sales and client relations. Three and a half decades later, he remains with the company.
A Good Place to Stay
The free ski pass may have helped get Moff’s attention, but it clearly wasn’t enough to explain 35 years of longevity.
For Moff, one of the biggest attractions is that the work itself doesn’t become routine.
“What I love about my job at RDP is that no two customers are the same,” he says. “There are constant challenges that we work through, overcome and find solutions for with these clients. So my job never gets boring.”
And then there’s Vail.
Moff lives and works in an environment that offers hiking among Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks, snowboarding and long-distance running. The four-season lifestyle provides what he describes as an ideal work-life balance. That makes Vail an easy candidate for “Best Place to Work.”
But today’s workplace doesn’t necessarily have to be a physical place. As more resort and service provider team members work remotely, the definition of “place” becomes considerably more flexible. For some employees, the best place to work may be Vail. For others, it may be a home office, a different city or virtually anywhere with a reliable internet connection.
In that sense, the cloud may be the modern workplace.
What connects those different environments is less about geography and more about the work itself, the people doing it and the relationships they build.
Relationships Matter
Resort Data was founded in 1981, and Moff describes a company culture that places considerable value on personal relationships with customers.
The company serves a remarkably broad range of properties, including timeshare, fractional and wholly owned units, condos and condotels. Its systems also serve RV parks and campgrounds and workforce housing, and RDP can manage mixed-use properties in a single system.
Its customer base ranges from 10 luxury homes in Belize to a 1,500-room hotel and condominium property, with clients throughout North America, Central America and the Caribbean.
That variety is one reason the work remains interesting. It also helps explain why relationships matter. Moff regularly visits clients, and Resort Data hosts an annual customer conference in Vail. The gathering provides an opportunity for clients and the RDP team to spend time together in a relatively intimate environment.
That emphasis on relationships extends into the software itself.
Don’t Stop Improving
The technology Moff encountered when he joined RDP in 1991 bears little resemblance to today’s platform.
The company started with a DOS product before moving to Windows in the late 1990s. Since then, the software environment has continued to evolve with the industry and with changing customer expectations. Today, RDP includes embedded payments through RDP Pay, dynamic pricing capabilities, a booking engine with two-way interfaces to distribution partners, and tools for guest engagement and analytics.
Its RDP Engage module, for example, incorporates guest surveys, two-way texting and sentiment analysis. Artificial intelligence can help analyze guest feedback and even assist with responses based on previous interactions.
The company’s owner portal gives owners access to balances, payments, calendars, statements and, where applicable, options involving their available timeshare or fractional-use inventory.
The point isn’t simply that RDP has accumulated more features over 40-plus years. It is that the company has continued to change rather than allowing longevity to become an excuse for standing still.
One particularly interesting example is the company’s ideas portal. RDP clients can suggest enhancements, while other clients can vote and comment on those ideas. The development team reviews the feedback and may incorporate selected suggestions into the system.
In other words, the people using the software have a voice in determining where it goes next.
That may be one of the more important lessons in creating a “Best Place to Work.” Longevity isn’t necessarily created by keeping everything the same. Sometimes it’s created by giving people interesting problems to solve and the opportunity to help build what comes next.
Looking Ahead
After 35 years with Resort Data, Moff isn’t looking backward. When asked about the next five years, his answer is straightforward: more artificial intelligence. “AI is here,” he says. “It was here yesterday, and I want to embrace that.”
His goal is to use the tools available through AI to better serve Resort Data’s clients, their teams and their guests. That attitude may explain as much about Moff’s longevity as the ski passes and the Colorado scenery ever could.
A great workplace can certainly be about location. It can be about flexibility, colleagues, culture and work-life balance. But perhaps the most important characteristic is the opportunity to keep learning and improving. For Ross Moff, that has meant 35 years of solving new problems for different customers while watching an entire software industry transform around him.
The best place to work, it seems, isn’t necessarily a particular building—or even a particular state. Sometimes it’s wherever good people are given interesting problems to solve, trusted relationships to build and the opportunity to keep moving forward.
And sometimes, apparently, there’s a ski lift nearby.
