🚫 OTAs Suck ✅ Building a Book Direct, Decentralized, Open-OTA ➜ 🚀 Operators Get Direct Bookings ✈️ Travelers Get Rewards for Booking Direct 💰 Anyone Who Refers Travelers Owns Them & the Revenue Stream They Generate.

🐥 I'm a startup founder, launching a direct booking travel platform for the AI agent era.

Why? Today, Online Travel Agent (OTA) commissions are draining 10's of billions of dollars out of the travel ecosystem. They enrich "Big Tech" and "Big Travel", at the expense of everyone else. I know because I helped them do it. For years I was a super-affiliate of Expedia and other big OTAs. I fed $100m+ in hotel bookings to the OTAs, generating $10m in commissions, but adding little of value to the ecosystem.

Now, I'm building a new travel distribution platform and protocol that enables travelers and their AI agents bypass the OTA middlemen and book direct.

👇 Want to be notified when we launch? Leave a comment in the featured post below titled "AI-powered community", or reach out and connect! 

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Previously...

🐣 I co-founded a venture studio. We launched 3 notable ventures:
 
1️⃣ 3Genius International. Network of travel booking websites. $100M+ in bookings and $10M+ in gross profit.

2️⃣ Moola.com. Multiplayer game. Grew virally to 450k community members, $7.6M economy. PCWorld's “Best Places to Waste Time on the Web”.
 
3️⃣ Locationary. Local data and community platform. Rewarded users for crowdsourcing local business data (eg. like for Apple Maps). $4.5M in funding. Acquired by Apple.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

🧠 Current Interests: AI, community, machine learning, travel, fintech, loyalty rewards, web3 / tokens / blockchain, creator & influencer economy, social commerce, marketplaces, network effects.

Arlen Ritchie

OTI Lumionics

Production Manager

Senior Process Engineer

Process Engineer

● Extensively worked on OLED Product Development including ultra-thin flexible lighting system
development and display related product improvements
● Improved production yield by 40% with team members
● Optimized evaporating sources and crucible flux shapings; tested sources stability and reliability
with experiments and lab reports
● Set up and maintained compressed air lines for pneumatic controls
● Implemented water cooling infrastructure for various production equipment
● Constructed the ultra-high vacuum system and performed the leak test and troubleshoot leak spots
whenever is needed
● Activated the cleanroom and monitored particle counting of the cleanroom
● Involved in assembling, testing, and improving the performance of the transfer system in ultra-high
vacuum chambers
● Collaborated with software engineers in launching and optimizing PLC controls and MES
● Worked as a critical member in upgrading the electrical cabinets for the manufacturing equipment
and assisted with passing the Ontario Electrical Safety certificates for the production equipment
● Prepared glass/flexible substrates for mass production and encapsulated the end products (flexible
OLEDs) in a glove-box enclosure
● Work also involves regular vacuum chamber maintenance, thin film device characterization
(uniformity/thickness/reflective/lumens/efficiency test/aging test), and organic materials
sublimation.

Manufacturing Engineer

3D Lighting Innovations Inc. (3DLightFX)

Overseen business relations in 60 countries while guiding importing, supply chain operations, and purchasing
Selected Contributions:
● Improved order process by creating online order platform
● Maximized efficiency by coordinating production schedules and supply chain processes in
collaboration with manufacturers in China
● Enhanced inventory and lead-time across the supply chain by consolidating orders

Supply Chain and Orders

University of Toronto

● Managed time reporting of projects, contracts and stipendiary documents for 50 students, under direct supervision of professor leading research projects
● Organized documents using BlackBoard Portal and Google Apps platform
● Maintained detailed records of projects using MS Project, Travelogue and Google Sheets 
● Performed monthly reconciliation on stipend accounts and rectified transaction errors

Stipendiary and Project Officer (Finance/Administrative Assistant and Customer Service Support)

● Working on a project with the topic of Volatile Metal Emission from Electric Arc Furnace under supervision of Assistant professor Kinnor Chattopadhyay.
● Conducted thermodynamic simulation on 10 industrial cases using FactSage software and mass balance calculation on 10 industrial cases using Microsoft Excel.
● Attended the Conference of Metallurgy 2015 and present the project results.

Research Assistant

McMaster University

● Researched the Effect of Impurities on the Electrical Conductivity of Cr2O3 to improve the conductivity of Fuel Cells 
● Found potential benefits of magnesium in increasing conductivity of Cr2O3 up to 33 times
● Measured electrical conductivity of Cr2O3 by four-point technique and independently operated furnace and gas cylinders

Beijing Beiye Functional Materials Corporation

Worked with technicians to study the theory of manufacturing methods and solved problems experienced during manufacture.

Studied the advanced techniques in researching, developing and manufacturing precision alloys, superalloys and stainless steels.

Understood the manufacture process of forgings, hot rolled pieces, cold rolled strips, precision castings, crystal/amorphous soft magnetic cores, mutual inductors by visiting factories and labs.

Gained knowledge concerning testing methods about the quality of materials.

Learned to operate producing and testing facilities.

Junior Product Engineer Intern

University of Science and Technology Beijing

-Worked on a project with the topic of Strategy of Cancer Treatment in Photodynamic Therapy by Using Zinc Oxide Nanorods/Au Nanocomposites with Ultraviolet Irradiation under supervision of Professor Yue Zhang
-Synthesized water-soluble and biofunctional ZnO nanorods with Au nanocomposites.
-Characterized and analyzed samples with FESEM, TEM, XRD and PL pattern.

taplio

The Battle

Arlen Ritchie

Sally Zhang, P. Eng

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