Bob Diener
Robert Diener is the Co-Founder and President of getaroom.com, which was awarded best hotel booking site by Frommers.com. After receiving his law degree from Cornell, where he was an editor of the Law Review, Bob practiced securities and corporate law with the firm of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. He later founded, headed and sold several airline travel companies and in 1991, founded Hotel Reservations Network, which became Hotels.com. He created the merchant model for booking hotel rooms and launched one of the first travel sites on the Web in 1995. He sold a majority interest in the company to Interactive Corp. and took the company public as President in early 2000 in one of the most successful IPOs ever. He sold the balance of his interest in late 2003 and merged with Expedia.
As a leading travel industry expert, Bob is a frequent source for many major news organizations as well as a recurrent guest on many television and radio stations, including NBC, CNN and Fox News. Bob is featured on KGO radio San Francisco every Sunday and his articles have been published on sites such as aish.com and the Harvard Business Review.
Bob is on the National Boards of AIPAC, Israel Bonds and the Hasbara Fellowships. He is active with Scheck Hillel Community School, Aish HaTorah, the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, the JCS Kosher Food Bank, the Miami Children’s Museum and many other organizations. Bob has taught Business Practice at the Cornell Law School and has been a scholar in residence at the University of Florida Entrepreneurship program. He was recently awarded the Alumni Entrepreneur of the year by the University of Florida. Bob lives in Miami with his wife Michelle and their five kids. He is an avid kitesurfer, snowboarder and triathlete.
