Meet Our Board Of Directors

Ted is the President of Direct Booking IQ, a boutique agency that specializes in the digital marketing space with a focus on the marriage of data and intelligence applied to enhance bid management. Prior to founding Direct Booking IQ, Ted most recently served as Senior Vice President, Digital Commerce & Media at La Quinta Holdings, Inc. In this role, he oversaw all product direction including mobile, apps and desktop sites, onward distribution and media. During his time at La Quinta, the company grew from 350 hotels and $20MM in digital revenue to over 900 hotels and $1.5 in digitally booked revenue annually. Before joining La Quinta, he was Director, Channel Distribution at Choice Hotels International. Early in his career, Ted served in multiple management positions of several Holiday Inn branded hotels in Oklahoma City. This is where he began his career in hospitality as a bellman in high school. The travel industry is clearly in his DNA and the evolution of digital marketing keeps it fun!

Yibai Li, Ph.D. is an associate professor of business analytics at the University of Scranton. He has a Ph.D. in information systems, master of science in management information systems, double bachelor’s degree in computer science and business administration. He has more than 10 years of experience in the scientific research of business analytics, data mining and machine learning and their applications in the hospitality management. He has published more than 30 papers or books in these areas. He serves as a chair for the Augmented Artificial Intelligence theme at a top international conference HICSS (The Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences) . He teaches extensively on the topics such as business intelligence, data mining, data warehousing and etc. He developed and co-founded the Hotel Business Management Training Simulation (www.hotelsimulation.com) ranks #1 in Google’s search result and it has been used by tens and thousands of people worldwide.

Arvind is a hospitality expert with over two decades of industry experience working for luxury brands in Asia, the Middle East and North America. With a diverse background of on-property, regional and global brand experience, Arvind brings with him a unique understanding of the hospitality landscape, and has become an expert in bringing products to market on a global scale. Throughout his career Arvind has had exposure collaborating with a diverse range of people and industry segments, working in Channel and Distribution Marketing, Revenue Management, Hotel Opening Operations, Call Centers and among Sales & Marketing Teams. Most recently, he was the Senior Director of Global Distribution and Channels for Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts. With over 120 hotels spanning 47 countries in their portfolio, he was responsible for establishing distribution and channel strategy for the brand globally. This included turnkey management of all third-party global contracts, connectivity and distribution operations as well as performance and optimization of the globally contracted channels.

Dev Koushik is a global executive with significant expertise in pricing, revenue management, distribution, data science and analytics functions in the travel, transportation and logistics sectors. He has proven success in leveraging his skill sets in advanced analytics, technology and product management to build and lead high-performance teams that deliver industry leading results. One of his travel industry-leading achievements was designing and implementing a price optimization capability that resulted in incremental revenue improvements to the tune of $600M. Most recently at XPO Logistics (a transportation and logistics firm), Dev was responsible for overseeing pricing and revenue management as well as creating enduring solutions that allowed XPO to drive top-line revenues and profitability growth. Prior to XPO Logistics, he held key leadership roles in IHG, focusing on generating top-line revenue growth through innovative revenue strategies and advanced analytics. Dev also brings a unique perspective from the wider travel space, as during his time consulting for PROS he worked with a number of the airline and car rental organizations. am! Click here to add images, text and links, or connect data from your collection.

With over a decade of hospitality marketing and communication experience, working for Fortune 500 companies and industry disruptors, Victoria has become an expert in building integrated marketing campaigns for both big brands and small hotels alike. During her career, Victoria has been exposed to a broad range of on-property and corporate communication experience. As a member of the InterContinental Times Square team, she was actively involved in the opening of a 600 luxury hotel in the hard of Manhattan, After her time with IHG she launched a new destination based marketing division at Hilton, developing marketing, e-commerce and PR strategies focused on content and local partnerships to support the brands portfolio of 55 New York are hotels. Most recently as the country communication lead for Selina, she has helped guide one of the world’s fastest growing hospitality brands during its US expansion. Opening three properties, in three major metropolitan cities (New York, Miami and New Orleans) in under seven months, Victoria adapted the brands experience driven approach into a socially-minded content strategy to drive brand awareness and customer acquisition initiatives.