Steve, Richard and Sanjay have combined over 50 years experience in the online travel, hotel search and travel planning as leaders from Tripadvisor, Google Travel and now, DirectBooker.
At DirectBooker, our mission is to connect travelers who want to book directly with hotels who want to delight them. Our team is exceptionally experienced in the travel industry and operating at internet scale.
Richard Holden
DirectBooker Board Member, Advisor, former head of Google Travel
Richard is a former Googler with a career there spanning over twenty years. During his role as the Vice President and General Manager for Travel he initiated and led Google’s beloved Flights and Hotels products. His teams included several thousand members developing, marketing, and partnering on both consumer- and business-facing services, as well as the travel-specific advertising products.
Steve Kaufer
DirectBooker Board Member and Advisor, Cofounder and former CEO of Tripadvisor
Steve Kaufer is the travel industry trailblazer who co-founded Tripadvisor with the mission to help travelers around the world plan and book the perfect trip. Tripadvisor transformed the travel landscape by making UGC a must-have in travel planning, and grew to over a billion traveler reviews and opinions during Steve’s tenure. Steve is now the CEO of a new startup, Give Freely, which has the sole purpose of harnessing the collective power of online commerce for charitable good.
Sanjay Vakil
Co-founder, CEO at DirectBooker
Sanjay Vakil has played a pivotal role in shaping and shipping key products at industry giants like Google, Tripadvisor, and Time Out Group, with a focus on enhancing direct booking capabilities, optimizing digital advertising, and leveraging AI for personalization.
During his tenure at Google, Sanjay led teams across Hotels, Flights, Things to Do, and Vacation Packages. For Hotels, he led projects like Free Booking Links, Official Site badging, AI-powered price retrieval, and building Extranet tools to improve supplier visibility and direct revenue.
