Tech startup of the month.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: High Tech ColoradoBiz - Groople

Where: Centennial

www.groople.com

Founded: January 2003

INITIAL LIGHTBULB

Groople CEO David Loy, a veteran of the online travel industry with stints at Trip.com and eBags on his resume, long ago recognized group travel as an underserved niche in online booking, mainly because the industry's reservation backbone allows for only four hotel rooms to be booked at a time.

"We've always known since we started launching online travel sites ... that group was just ignored, because of the technical difficulties," Loy explained. "All travel agencies, whether they're brick-and-mortar or online, have direct connections into global distribution systems like Galileo and Sabre. Those systems have a limitation on hotel rooms. You can only book four rooms at a time. You can't change it because it's all in the supply chain."

In response, Loy launched Groople from a home office in early 2003 and essentially started from scratch, developing a new system that better facilitated group travel. After six months, he hired his first employee. Two years later, the company has hired about 100 more and recently moved into a new 30,000-square-foot facility in Centennial. Based on 200 percent sales growth from the fourth quarter of 2004 through the first quarter of this year, Loy said he anticipates doubling the company's staff by mid-2006.

IN A NUTSHELL

Whereas sites like Travelocity (now a Groople customer) and Orbitz have traditionally plugged into global distribution systems, Groople developed proprietary technology and a network of relationships that circumvents them.

"One of the difficulties for a company doing group bookings online is that there's no single access to inventory," said Loy. "We had to build it. We had to build our own booking engine. We had to build our own inventory management system. Now we have 57,000 hotels in our database, all over the world." About 12,000 of these properties have pre-negotiated group rates offered in real time, he added.

Groople's technology is complemented by a call center with 50 group travel specialists. "We have a wedding desk, we have an air desk, we have a meetings and incentives desk," Loy explained.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

After a group selects a venue, an organizer plugs the specifics into the Groople website, which reserves a block of rooms and sends out e-mail invites to everyone in the group. Breaking from tradition, Groople allows each invitee to pay for his or her room separately.

"We sell all travel...