manager of hospitality accounting software
developer M3. Last year, Blackstone Growth
and AAHOA signed a definitive agreement
for a majority investment to help enhance
M3’s new product expansion and supporting
the adoption of the company's software.
"This partnership with M3 will bring
AAHOA members access to advanced
technology and innovative solutions that can
enhance operational efficiency and drive
growth," said Miraj Patel, AAHOA chairman
at the time.
Middleton emphasized the fact that M3 is
focused on hospitality.
“We are purposefully built for hospitality.
We don't have verticals. We don't go to
manufacturing and retail and everything
else. We focus on hotels, lodging and
restaurants,” he said. “We think it's a really
special space.”
While many hotel owners may turn to
all-purpose accounting packages, such as
QuickBooks, Middleton said such software
doesn’t provide a complete service.
Purpose-built software, such as M3’s, takes
into account the needs of hotel employees
who will be using the system, including
general managers and night auditors.
“Understanding the persona of all of
those people and being able to tailor a
product that is going to drive that business
so much further, because the way the
product works and the results that it spits
out is exactly what those people need to
do their job better,” Middleton said. “Why
you really need something purpose built,
there's a ton of things that QuickBooks can't
give you. It can't pull in all of your property
management data automatically for you. It
can't auto code and create your P&L for you.
It cannot create and track all the PO BARS,
and not only to know just what you've done,
but where should those numbers be, and
how you get to where you want to be.”
QuickBooks was not built as a tool to
software specifically for hotels. Over the
last few years, however, that has changed
with more companies producing similar
packages.
“It's because people are finally seeing the
true value of having a system that is built for
them and understands how they think, how
they work,” Middleton said.
Hansen gave similar reasons for hotels to
go with purpose-built fin tech software.
“Having a technology solution that was
created ourselves, we did this purpose built
for hotels and the hotel industry, one of
the things that factored into not only what
we built, but more so how we built it was
the consideration of who is going to be
accessing this technology, what are their
specific skill sets, and what are they doing
on a day to day,” Hansen said.
Housekeepers on the floor and front desk
workers alike don't want something that is
not created for them, Hansen said.
“Rather, they want something that is
considerate of their time,” he said. “So we
do things like develop an app that we know
every housekeeper is walking around on the
floors at their hotel inspecting rooms, they
should be able to access the data and the
necessarily manage hotel business, he said.
“It wasn't built as a tool to understand
what you need to do going forward based
on what has happened. It was built as a tool
to basically get the numbers created so a
business owner could easily have a P&L that
they could give an accountant to do a tax
return,” Middleton said.
For years, he said, M3 was the only
company specializing in accounting
Cover Story
21
“We are purposefully built for
hospitality. We don't have verticals.
We don't go to manufacturing and
retail and everything else. We focus
on hotels, lodging and restaurants.”
Shane Middleton, channel alliances manager for M3
www.asianhospitality.com
September 2025 | Issue 240
Shane Middleton, left, channel alliances manager of hospitality accounting software developer M3, and
James Hansen, start up company Reeco’s vice president of business development efforts, gave an update
on trends in fin tech during the recent LendingCon conference in August.