School of Hotel Administration juniors, from left, Carrie Fleming, Phil Auerbach and Amy Buckwalter are student employees of Ithaca's RealTime Hotel Reports LLC. Charles Harrington/University Photography
As Internet startups go, Ithaca's RealTime Hotel Reports LLC is unique. It collects and sells sophisticated information about the lodging industry via the World Wide Web -- making it a single source of information designed specifically to enhance hotels' success in the highly competitive industry.
Another unusual feature: Thirty-five of RealTime's 67 employees are students, most of them from Cornell's School of Hotel Administration and colleges of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. With better-than-average hourly wages and a real opportunity to learn about the hotel industry, it's a great part-time job to have when you're preparing for a career in the industry, says Phil Auerbach. A junior in the Hotel School from Lexington, Mass., he has been working for RealTime since January 1999.
"It's the '90s and the whole interest in Internet startups drew me in," said Auerbach. Like most student employees at RealTime, Auerbach started as a part-time data specialist, calling hotels around the country to solicit and verify information to augment the company's vast database. His acuity about the industry soon got him promoted to senior data specialist -- part of a team of five who train, supervise and guide the data specialists in collecting the most accurate information possible for the database. He also doubles as senior research specialist -- recommending what information RealTime might collect that would be useful to industry professionals. Auerbach worked at both jobs full time all last summer and now fits them in part time between studies.
"We're really not like any other company. We're unique," said Carrie Fleming, a Hotel School junior from Westborough, Mass. The company bills its highly sophisticated web site as one-stop shopping for clients, the only source for vital information, such as how well they are doing compared to competitors on a given day, week, month or year and where it's appropriate to expand a property or build a new one. Clients can also zero in on articles on an array of lodging-industry topics -- from evaluating the crime risk around a property to who's who at the top at Four Seasons hotels -- and order reports customized to their special needs.
Like Auerbach, Fleming started as a data specialist but now works on special projects, designing and fine-tuning the customized reports from her campus computer and communicating with RealTime via e-mail. She has a demanding course load this semester, so the flexible work arrangement is ideal.
Amy Buckwalter, a Hotel School junior from Yardley, Pa., started in special projects and is now recruiting manager for all of RealTime's student hires. "It's so satisfying watching the company grow and knowing that you are contributing to that," she said. The experience has helped reinforce some of the material she is learning in class, she said. She welcomes student inquiries about job opportunities at RealTime and advises writing to her at <jobs@hotelreports.com>.
Although RealTime's student employees can work as hard as its permanent staff, the company culture makes what they do seem more like play. "It's a young company, very informal," said Auerbach. "They pretty much told me not to wear a tie for my interview. And when Kong" -- the black Labrador retriever owned by Brian Ferguson, the company's founder and president -- "comes to the office, I always stop and play with him."
"The Hotel School is the reason we moved to Ithaca," said Ferguson. The students, he says, are "terrific." And having a resource like Cornell nearby "enables us to hire motivated young people who already understand the industry."
A "hotelie" himself, Ferguson graduated from the school's master's degree program in 1995. He also gained experience working at such grande-dame hotels as New York City's Waldorf-Astoria as well as with Africa Expeditions, a company specializing in safari tours. In both venues, he soon realized that the kind of information hospitality managers really need to be competitive was simply not available. He launched RealTime in 1997 to respond to that need.
The information that RealTime's student and professional teams have uncovered has already turned some conventional wisdom about the industry on its head. For example, industry experts often say that there are, at most, 35,000 hotels in the United States. But RealTime researchers have already uncovered an additional 25,000, revealing just how poorly documented statistics on U.S. hotels have been until now.
RealTime's sophisticated web site is slated to go "live" with most of its free offerings Nov. 6. The date was selected to coincide with the opening of the International Hotel/Motel and Restaurant Show at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. Economic and demographic information and real estate reports will be accessible in December, and hotel performance statistics should be up by February 2000.
Auerbach will be among the Cornell students promoting the company at the exposition. "The November hotel show should be a huge opportunity for RealTime," he said. Typically the gathering is also a good time to scout out potential post-graduation jobs, something he hopes to do. He will be joined by several bus loads of his Hotel School classmates who have signed up for the school's 1999 caravan to the event.
All three students believe that they are now in a better position to attract prime job offers because of their experience at RealTime. "I don't know any other jobs where you get this kind of exposure" to the skills you'll need in the industry, said Auerbach, who hopes to go into real estate finance or consulting when he graduates. "The projects I've been assigned have constantly pushed me to learn about new areas and empowered me to take ownership of my projects and run with them," said Buckwalter, who aims to become a human resource specialist in the hospitality industry.
"Working for RealTime has given me a great foundation," said Fleming. "Already my knowledge base has surpassed what some people out there know." But more than that, "it has given me the confidence to succeed," she said. At the moment she's keeping her future options open but envisions eventually teaching in a university hospitality management program like Cornell's.
For information about RealTime Hotel Reports LLC, visit this web site after Nov. 6: http://www.hotelreports.com.
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