Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
They may not be pushing 60 like the majority of travelconference attendees, but that doesn't mean Tom Breitling, 30,and Tim Poster, 31, aren't industry vets. It's been 10years since they turned Poster's University of SouthernCalifornia business class project into Las Vegas ReservationSystems (LVRS), a hotel booking engine for properties based in,yes, Sin City. The crap shoot was transferring their success ontothe Internet. After all, their money, lives and futures were atstake.
Let go of your seat--Travelscape.com Inc., now parent company toLVRS, had gross bookings of $104 million last year--a $77 millionincrease from 1998, when LVRS, once purely a call center,discovered Internet booking. Seeing as how industry forecasters arepredicting online travel to be a $16.6 billion market by 2003, andlast January's official launch of Travelscape.com offeredwholesale hotel-only and air and hotel packages to destinationsworldwide, the growth is no surprise. The time and technologyinvolvedwere, however.
Continue reading this article — and all of our other premium content with Entrepreneur+
Join the internet’s leading entrepreneur community! With your subscription you’ll get:
- Unlimited access, including premium content
- No ads
- Subscription to狗万官方magazine
- Four free e-books a year
- Subscriber-only events with our experts