After years of working in the travel industry, destination marketing organization (DMO) guru Jim Brody had an idea for a startup business that he believed could change the travel industry entirely. Rather than requiring travelers to know where they want to go, or spend oodles of time searching the web to compare destinations, Brody’s website would help visitors “get inspired and find the perfect destination,” letting them search options all in one place. Think TripAdvisor, or Yelp, for travel destinations. Brody’s vision was for destination cities to be able to build a profile, of sorts, and robust user reviews will provide the organic feedback that vacation searchers are looking for, beyond a tourism brochure.

Brody found himself with a great idea, along with years of experience in travel marketing and digital marketing, and he built the site himself. But he needed a wider set of business skills in order to launch his own endeavor. The head of tourism in Rhode Island pointed him to the RISBDC, where he teamed up with business counselor Josh Daly.

“I can’t begin to tell you how valuable working with the RISBDC has been, and kudos to Josh,” said Brody. “He helped me craft a pitch deck and an executive summary. It was like taking a miniature MBA course in terms of management.” Daly helped Brody develop pitches and presentations for investors, helped with documentation and networking, and directed him to the SPARC program at URI.

Destinationrecommended.com launched a year ago and is growing organically. In less than a year, it features more than 2,500 unique pieces of user generated reviews and ratings, and was receiving over 8,000 unique site visitors each month, and growing. Brody has blended his new business skills with his travel industry experience to make his site pitch-ready and ripe for investment. “Our mission is to help every traveler find their next destination and to give every destination a voice,” said Brody. With support from RISBDC’s Josh Daly, Destinationrecommended.com–like its users–is ready for takeoff!