Nathan Mayfield, President, ResNexus

I’m Nathan Mayfield, and I’m president of ResNexus. I’ve spent more than twenty-three years in marketing, including time at a billion-dollar company, and I’ve now been with ResNexus for close to thirteen years. I’m also a member of the Forbes Business Council. What I enjoy most about the company is its mission: learn, serve, grow. We help hospitality businesses — bed and breakfasts, boutique hoteliers, campgrounds, and glamping operators — run their operations and manage every connection point, from direct bookings on their own website to channels like Airbnb and Booking.com.

I wear several hats. As a product architect, I help shape the software itself, and my background also spans marketing and operations. These days I’m spending more of my time on product architecture.

I also oversee strategic partnerships, managing our relationships with major players like Airbnb and Booking.com, revenue managers such as PriceLabs and RoomPrice Genie, and, increasingly, AI integration partners.

What sets our software apart is a focus on the guest experience, not just the operator’s. Our booking engine is intuitive and gives properties powerful tools, like upselling, without adding complexity.

We’re a smaller company, but we build as much as possible directly into the platform. Most property management systems claim to be all-in-one, yet they typically rely on third-party integrations — a separate subscription for a website, another for email marketing. ResNexus has built in travel protection, text messaging, and email marketing natively. That translates into less training for staff and lower costs for the property, since there’s no extra subscription to manage. We’re not against integrations — we maintain strong partnerships with Airbnb and Booking.com — but more of our functionality is developed in-house than with competing platforms.

Beyond the technology, we’re first and foremost a customer service company. We take a white-glove approach: customers can call and reach a real person, not an AI, without first booking a meeting through email, which some competitors require. That personal touch is something our customers consistently value.

Our strongest market share is among mid-sized to small independent properties — what we call “unique stay leaders.” These are typically owner-operated, on-site businesses: a distinctive bed and breakfast or boutique hotel with anywhere from twenty-five to fifty units.

We’re family-owned and family-run; my brother, James Mayfield, is our CEO. One of our earliest clients was a themed boutique hotel with more than a hundred rooms — one room styled like a safari, another like New York. We were among the first cloud-based property management systems to support direct bookings, starting back in 2004, so we’ve been in this space for a long time.

James built that client’s online booking engine, then followed up a few months later to see how direct bookings were performing. The engine was ahead of its time — larger photos than the OTAs offered, richer descriptions, and more. The client told us they’d doubled their revenue within six months and reached the million-dollar mark far sooner than expected.

Once we recognized what we had, James took that technology and brought it to mid-sized and independent operators — not the Marriotts of the world, but property owners without the resources of a major chain who still needed that level of capability. A system like this effectively acts as a full-time employee, lifting a significant operational burden. That’s remained our focus ever since: taking the technology burden off our clients’ shoulders.

AI is evolving quickly, and it’s reshaping the industry on several fronts. Search is one of them. SEO still matters, but travelers increasingly ask AI direct questions rather than searching for “places to stay” — they ask, “What’s the best place to stay?” and receive a direct answer, which can cut a property out of the process entirely. Because we’re an all-in-one platform, we also build template and custom websites, and we offer answer-engine-optimization services to help properties surface in AI results. We also help them refine their listings across every marketing channel, including OTAs.

One shift reminds me of what happened when our online booking engine first launched. Back then, operators wanted every booking handled by phone for a personal touch, but few wanted to field a call at two in the morning. Now the phone is making a comeback, in a different form: AI agents can answer calls and complete bookings on a guest’s behalf. We’ve partnered with AI companies so a guest can call a property, have an agent answer their questions and finalize the booking, and see it appear directly in the ResNexus system. I expect that trend to continue — travelers will ask their phone for the best place to stay, review the options it surfaces, and simply say, “book it.” The booking engine may increasingly become a browsing tool while a growing share of bookings happen by voice.

AI is also moving into marketing — generating emails, building campaigns, and targeting guest behavior. That’s still early, but it’s the direction we’re heading: a more seamless experience that recognizes returning guests, tracks what they’ve purchased and enjoyed, and automatically sends the right offer at the right time.

That’s like choosing a favorite child — there are so many. But the one that consistently surprises me, because properties rarely set it up themselves, is our automated email marketing. Our booking engine collects birthday and anniversary information when guests choose to share it, which happens about seventy percent of the time, and the system automatically sends a promotion on those dates. It meaningfully increases the return-guest rate.

Mid-sized to smaller operators often feel overwhelmed when they join a new system and don’t realize everything it can do. When we call to check in, they sometimes assume we’re selling something. In reality, we’re just pointing them to features they’re already paying for. So I’d rank email marketing as the biggest impact, followed by our automated dynamic pricing, which adjusts rates based on occupancy and demand.

All of that builds on one foundation: a fantastic, easy-to-use booking engine. Without it, nothing else matters. Beyond that first step, sustaining the guest relationship comes down to automated email marketing.

Our built-in travel protection is one we never saw coming — it emerged from COVID. During the pandemic, many small to mid-sized clients faced real risk of closing when a wave of cancellations hit at once, since they depend on future bookings’ cash flow to cover today’s bills.

What we didn’t expect is how quickly we responded: within three days, we helped clients send vouchers to guests, offering credit toward a future stay instead of a cancellation. It genuinely saved some of those businesses. From there, we built travel protection into the platform permanently — a feature Airbnb and Booking.com later adopted as well, though we pioneered it at the individual property level. Guests can now select travel protection during booking, including coverage for events like hurricanes and severe weather. It extends the property’s own terms and conditions and gives guests genuine peace of mind. We never anticipated offering it, but it became a necessity in response to the market, and it remains a valuable feature today.

As we’ve grown — still a small company, but one that’s expanded globally — I’ve learned the importance of delegating and trusting the team. Wearing as many hats as I do, there have been moments I tried to control too much instead of stepping back and letting others take the lead.

Some of my mistakes came from moving too fast on too many fronts at once, rather than slowing down and delegating — what we call “the speed of stupid.” What’s changed is a deliberate effort to focus on the few things that make the greatest impact for our clients, instead of chasing every request that comes in. That discipline matters even more now, with AI accelerating everything. The mistake I made, and corrected, was learning to prioritize the work that actually moves our clients’ businesses forward.