When Phillip Langeberg took over IT leadership at The Resorts Companies in 2017, he faced a problem that doesn’t show up in business school case studies. He was building a modern technology organization for a company that operates at the intersection of hospitality, real estate, and recreation, and there was no obvious playbook for it.
The company runs two flagship properties in Virginia: Wilderness Presidential Resort, a 600-acre camping and recreation destination, and Massanutten Resort, a 6,000-acre, four-season property with 2,500 accommodations, ski, an indoor and outdoor waterpark, four restaurants, two recreation centers, two golf courses, and more. Its technology ecosystem has to support everything from reservations and guest engagement to point of sale, property management, marketing platforms, and operational systems across multiple venues and verticals. And as a 100% employee-owned (ESOP) company since 2015, every technology decision carries weight beyond the immediate bottom line. Every employee has an ownership stake. Getting it wrong is not just a budget problem.
“The challenge is really trying to find the software and build the ecosystem that allows all these different business verticals to work together,” said Langeberg, CTO of Resorts Companies. Benchmarks from companies far smaller or far larger weren’t useful. He needed a perspective that could meet him where he actually was.
Seeing the larger framework
That’s where IDC came in. Over more than a decade, Langeberg has used IDC analyst conversations and IDC Roundtables to validate strategy, pressure-test decisions, and benchmark against peers across industries well beyond hospitality.
In 2021, a group of IDC analysts helped him think through the right staffing model for his IT organization, making recommendations based on the company’s goals, existing systems, and where technology was heading. Knowing that the future would be shaped by AI and data analytics, Langeberg used that guidance to build those capabilities in-house, reducing reliance on external vendors before the wave hit.
More recently, as The Resorts Companies planned a 140-room hotel addition to its waterpark, the expansion became a catalyst to standardize point of sale systems across the entire resort. IDC helped cut through a crowded vendor market to identify the solutions that actually fit. “You Google point of sale vendors and there’s a ton out there,” said Langeberg. “That’s really what IDC can bring to the table, the ability to come in and say, you’re in this industry, you’re doing this, let’s figure out what software platforms align with what you guys are doing as a business.”
IDC Roundtables added another dimension, bringing Langeberg into conversation with CIOs and CTOs from industries ranging from water treatment to manufacturing. Hearing what leaders in completely different sectors were building, and what they were running into, shaped decisions he never would have reached staying inside the hospitality lane.
“Being able to have conversations with IDC analysts is really helpful because they see the larger framework,” said Langeberg. “There could be a solution I’m not considering because I’m only looking at the hospitality sector.”
The relationship becomes a platform
When IDC introduced Quanta, a new AI platform built on IDC’s proprietary research and intelligence, Langeberg recognized immediately what made it different from the general-purpose AI tools he had already been using. “If I go to one of the other AI products out there and search for something, it’s searching the internet, and we all know that everything on the internet isn’t always accurate,” he said. “Maybe it’s paid marketing material for a product, and that’s weighing the decision and ultimately weighing where you’re guiding your business.” Quanta draws from verified IDC intelligence instead, with every response citing the underlying report or MarketScape it came from.
The trust, though, didn’t come from the platform’s architecture. It came from the relationship. “It’s almost like taking the power of all the IDC analysts and putting it into a simple query engine that I’m able to use,” said Langeberg. “An AI backed by IDC’s research gives me a lot more confidence in the answers.”
Looking around the corner
With major expansions underway, including a new waterpark hotel with a redesigned check-in experience, and the Bluestone Peak 55+ active adult community, The Resorts Companies is entering its most complex period of growth. Langeberg plans to use Quanta to build multi-year technology roadmaps and model vendor decisions before committing, backed by IDC’s market intelligence.
“When I walk into that moment where I’m not sure where I need to be on something, I know that IDC is there as a partner, through their research, the AI platform, the analysts, to help us plot the right course.”
For technology leaders navigating complex, niche industries without a natural peer group, that combination of earned credibility and on-demand access is exactly the edge that’s hard to find anywhere else.
