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a million people into the U.S. every year from countries all over the world. Was there ever an ah-ha moment that led you to hospitality? I went to Cornell for Hotel Management and aer I graduated I went to New York, as a lot of my peers did. I got a job as an analyst for a private equity bank called Commonwealth Associates. en 9/11 happened and times got tough in the city, I was laid off and had my ah-ha moment playing basketball in Queens in the middle of the day while trying to shop a resume. I said to myself, 'What am I doing? I'm a Cornell graduate and I'm shooting basketball in Queens in a public park.' at's when I decided I never wanted to work for anybody again because I wanted more control over my own destiny. at's when I decided to be an entrepreneur like my parents. I moved back to California, raised some money, and luckily I had a background from being an analyst for a private equity bank, where I was looking at business plans all day long. I knew how to write a pretty good one. en I raised money from friends and family to start HotelPlanner. I also took classes at engineering school as well in computer science because I knew online travel was going to be big — we were using sites like Expedia and Priceline when I was at school in 2001. It's something that I was always interested in and then when I saw the niche for group travel online in 2003, it made perfect sense for the background from hotel sales from working at my family's hotels and also the group travel side from my mother's business. Tell me about the launch of HotelPlanner. What was your vision? We wanted to do large bookings, we weren't really that focused on groups at first. We just wanted to have hotels bid on people's businesses but saw that the demand at that time was for bigger bookings because nobody was touching that market. at was what spurred more hotel interest too, we could get more bids from hotels if the business was bigger. en we set our name as HotelPlanner but in part became wedding planners, event planners, meeting planners, and acquired Meetings.com and began licensing our technology out to other distribution channels. Aer that, we started building more tools specifically around helping hotels book large groups and meetings. What are your company's core values? At our core, we feel like we're making a difference in the world. We're bringing people together for special occasions and meaningful events. at's why we put a lot of high touch into it and why we call ourselves HotelPlanner, because we have planners located all around the world. If you go to Rome, you get somebody dedicated and based in Rome. If you go to New York, you get somebody based in New York who knows what's going on and knows all the best places. ere's a lot of high touch, and you don't pay any money for that. We do feel like we're making a difference for the better because we're giving these people the opportunity to connect with individuals who have 10 years plus in the industry in their local market. What was the key to growing your business and domain? We were an early adopter of Google. I remember pushing Google ads back in 2003 and 2004 when we would be the only advertiser, even before some of the big guys. We were "We do feel like we're making a difference for the better because we're giving these people the opportunity to connect with individuals who have 10 years plus in the industry in their local market." POINT OF VUE V U E N J . C O M 92

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