Mountain Reservations Welcomes Founder of ResortQuest and Former Director of Hotels.com to its Board

(PRWEB) May 24, 2008 -- Mountain Reservations is proud to welcome Elan J. Blutinger to its board of directors. Already a leading provider of vacation rentals in the ski industry, Mountain Reservations is expanding its business this summer to offer private homes, condos, townhomes and resort lodging across North America and the Caribbean through its new brand, VacationRoost. Blutinger's experience will be a key component in the expansion to new beach, golf and outdoor vacation markets.

"Elan's experience in successfully launching travel companies and executing roll-ups in the space will be very valuable to us as we execute against our business plan," said Julian Castelli, CEO of Mountain Reservations.

Blutinger led the successful launch, Initial Public Offering and sale of two well-known travel companies: Travel Services International and ResortQuest International, the largest brand in the vacation property management industry. He also was a director at Hotels.com and chaired the special committee that sold the company to IAC/ InterActiveCorp. He is currently a Director of Great Wolf Resorts.

"We are thrilled to have a proven travel-industry leader like Elan joining our board," Castelli said. "Few people have the combination of experience in both the vacation-rental industry and the broader travel distribution space that Elan brings to the table."

Blutinger sees many parallels between VacationRoost and the other companies he's launched. VacationRoost, he said, is similarly taking advantage of a unique area of growth in the travel industry.

"It's exactly where VacationRoost is going, and it's exactly what we did at Hotels.com," Blutinger said. "VacationRoost (as Mountain Reservations) started out as a wonderful offline business. Now the real scale and opportunity is moving that business online."

Blutinger said he joined VacationRoost because the company has a leg up on the competition in a growing industry.

"There are a lot of startups trying to get traction in the vacation-rental space," Blutinger said. "What makes this opportunity different is that this organization not only has the vacation-rental inventory and the technology to merchandise it well online, they also have a healthy existing business with traffic, customers and the infrastructure necessary to process and fulfill hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions."

About us

Mountain Reservations is the leading online provider of professionally-managed vacation rentals with more than 80 Web sites - including www.mountainreservations.com, www.rooster.com and www.islandescapes.com - that feature over 200,000 vacation-rental properties in more than 300 markets. The company offers the largest selection of vacation rentals available on the Internet with the best support services and guaranteed best pricing. Mountain Reservations is expanding its business this summer to offer private homes, condos, townhomes and resort lodging across North America and the Caribbean through its new brand, www.vacationroost.com. For more information, visit www.mountainreservations.com.

Media Contact:

Dan Bischoff

Mountain Reservations

(801) 559-3263

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