Reservation Center Inc. (ResCntr), the
Agoura Hills, Calif.-based provider of 24-hour booking services and
the CCRA hotel program for agents, will be sold at an auction in
San Francisco on Nov. 20 to rectify a loan default on the part of
its owner, OneLink Corp.
The lender, Fort
Worth, Texas-based OurLink, took over the company last month and is
likely to wind up as the owner after the auction, said Dic Marxen,
the new CEO of ResCntr.
Meanwhile, Marxen
said that OurLink is striving to put ResCntr's financial house in
order.
He said agents and
vendors shouldn't feel many effects of the change in management and
eventual change in ownership, except for one thing: The company is
now paying debts to vendors, some of whom "were owed a lot of
money" and overdue commissions to agents.
25,000 agency customers
Worldwide, 25,000
agency locations use the CCRA hotel-booking portal, and a portion
of those agencies are subscribers to ResCntr's 24-hour services, as
well.
San Francisco-based
OneLink is a publicly traded, start-up technology company that does
not yet have a product in the market. It aims to provide booking
and settlement services for prepaid sales of nonair leisure
products across the globe, which also would enable the booking
agents to retain their commissions at time of sale.
In 2005, OneLink
spent $6 million to buy ResCntr from the Goldberg family, whose
patriarch, Jerry Goldberg, had founded the business in 1972 with
the expectation that the existing agent customer base and supplier
contracts would provide a launchpad for the new
technology.
However, sometime
during the middle of this year, OneLink had defaulted on $4.3
million in loans, which OurLink had provided to cover part of the
purchase price and to provide some working capital.
According to
Marxen, OurLink's investors still want OneLink to succeed, and the
decision to put the latter in default "was a business decision to
ensure the viability of ResCntr."
CEO's talent is turnarounds
Under terms of the
OurLink loan, he said, the Texas investment group is entitled to
take full control of ResCntr management in the case of an
unresolved default. With that default, the investment group tapped
Marxen, who had recently resigned from the OneLink board, as CEO,
effective Oct. 20. Middle management is unchanged, he added, but he
has brought in an interim CFO.
Marxen, a
turnaround specialist who prefers to be called a business
development entrepreneur, said it is likely OurLink will win the
bid at the Nov. 20 auction because most other parties aren't as
likely to put up what OurLink has already invested.
After the auction,
Marxen said that there will be "some very exciting initiatives to
announce."
As for what happens
to the OneLink technology, Marxen said that "is an important topic
to be resolved on the 20th."
In any case, he
said, "Our intention is to work very, very closely with OneLink. We
still believe in it, but we first want to make a viable company of
ResCntr. It's important for OneLink to get back to its core
business model of immediate settlement [services] for agents," he
said.
To contact the reporter who wrote this
article, send e-mail to Nadine Godwin at
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