Hotel search engine Room 77 has named travel industry and search veteran Drew Patterson as chief executive officer. The appointment comes at the heels of a $30 million financing around the company recently announced, that is getting used to accelerate Room 77’s growth and international expansion.
“Room 77 has experienced tremendous growth inside the last year, and Drew has the ideal background in travel and search to assist take the corporate to the subsequent level,” said Brad Gerstner, founder and Chairman of Room 77.
“The Room 77 team has built a big hotel search engine, which customers are raving about because it’s faster, easier to exploit and it’s helping them find better deals. Drew’s history as a product pioneer and brand builder will continue that momentum and help deliver our message to a much wider audience. Shall we not be more excited for him to be joining at this key moment inside the company’s growth cycle.” Adds Gerstner.
Patterson, a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Business School, is a seasoned travel executive. As one of the vital founding employees at travel metasearch site Kayak, he was instrumental in building the business and brand, serving in business development roles after which as vp of selling. He left Kayak in 2009 to co-found Jetsetter, which he helped build into the leading travel brand inside the flash sales segment with greater than $100 million gross bookings.
After leaving Jetsetter, Patterson co-founded a stealth mobile hotel startup called CheckMate, which Room 77 is simultaneously acquiring as portion of Patterson’s appointment. The CheckMate product and team are an outstanding complement to Room 77’s mission of creating the world’s best hotel search engine.
“Room 77 is a massive company with an international-class team. Their history of product innovation is impressive, and Room 77 has created an experience that travelers love and use many times,” said Patterson. “Travel search is a class with huge potential, further accelerated by the rapid shift to mobile. I‘m thrilled to come back to my search roots in an industry i like, and that i sit up for building Room 77 right into a global hotel search leader.”
The company has raised $43.8 million to this point from companies, venture capitalists and high-profile angels, including Expedia, Inc and Concur Technologies.