Put the experts on your side.

For over 25 years, the professionals at Travel Planners have been in the same business. We know the hotel trade inside out, but we work for you and your organization...not the hotels or the city government.

We create housing programs for trade shows, conventions and meetings with blocks of 1,000 to 25,000 rooms. We are the only housing provider that consistently guarantees the lowest hotel rates to attendees.

Three ways Travel Planners is different

We’re people-intensive. We are always available to you, your exhibitors and your attendees. While other providers use technology to replace people, we use it to enhance them. It’s common today to complain about overly automated, impersonal service – but you’ll never hear that complaint about Travel Planners. Meet our staff

Our technology is flawless and friendly. Users love the extreme ease and clarity of our reservation and booking management site. In fact, our proprietary technology has been recognized for excellence by both Microsoft and IBM. Our customized event websites offer flawless reservation execution and ready access to management tools and reports for meeting planners.

We proactively solve problems other providers ask you to live with. Like no other provider, Travel Planners consistently anticipates and solves the housing issues that meeting planners face. Your Master Plan comes complete with a suite of intuitive tools that reduce attrition, prevent customer service problems, manage wait-listing, avoid walks, and more.

Our entire Management Team is involved in your event.

Our sales team is your first point of contact:

Sonya Johnson, CEM, Director of Client Development, also brings us more than 20 years of experience with a hotel and a Convention Bureau, as owner of a DMC, and as a General Manager of a service contracting company. She is active in PCMA, IAEM and MPI.
Beth McEntee, Director of Corporate Relations came to Travel Planners as a Program Executive and moved up through the ranks to manage our Program Department and now handles corporate sales & marketing. Beth has a travel/hospitality degree and was once a meeting planner herself.

Your Program Executive is your key point of contact.

Assigned to handle every phase of your program, he or she will be selected on the basis of experience with groups of your size and characteristics. Your PE will learn the unique aspects of your event, facilitate negotiations and ensure a successful housing process.

Other key Management at your service will include:

Ray Vastola, President, and Ira Malin, Vice President, founded Travel Planners in 1980 after obtaining MBA degrees from Harvard Business School. They are actively engaged in the day-to-day operations of the company. Both are accessible to you, and they handpick the professionals who will be on your team.
Lisa Baez, Director of Strategy & Operations, spearheads our new technological initiatives critical to e-marketing and capturing more reservations for client events. Prior to joining Travel Planners in 1992, she did time in Hilton sales/convention service and as a meeting planner.
Becky Hansen, Director of IT, was the very first hire at Travel Planners. She knows our hardware and software from the bottom up, having worked in many company positions since 1982.
Louise Alvarado, Director of Program Operations, joined Travel Planners in 2005, fresh from her role as Director of Revenue Management at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City. Her career in hospitality also includes 10 years of management with the Starwood and Millennium hotel chains.
Desiree Crichlow, Director of Housing Reservations, oversees call center staff and the operational teams that insure the integrity of room blocks. Des joined Travel Planners as a reservation agent in 1994.
Brian Hendricks, Director of eMarketing, joined Travel Planners in 1999 as a Program Executive. He's also served as a Product Development Executive for our affiliated company, Quikbook. In his current role, he manages a team of web developers, copy specialists and graphic artists in creating results-oriented marketing.