Steve Rushmore is President and Founder of HVS, a global hospitality consulting organization with offices in New York (Mineola), San Francisco, Miami, Boulder, Dallas, Vancouver, Toronto, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Madrid, and Sydney. He directs the worldwide operation of this firm and is responsible for future office expansion and new product development. Mr. Rushmore has provided consultation services for more than 12,000 hotels throughout the world during his 35-year career and specializes in complex issues involving hotel feasibility, valuations, and financing. He was one of the creators of the Microtel concept and was instrumental in its IPO. HVS has provided consulting services for thousands of clients in all 50 states and more than 60 foreign countries. Its professional staff of more than 150 industry specialists offers a wide range of services, including market feasibility studies, valuations, strategic analysis, development planning, and litigation support. Through its divisions, HVS supplies unique hotel consulting expertise in the areas of executive search, parking, golf, food and beverage operations, gaming, technology, hotel operations and management, asset management, interior design, investment counseling and brokerage. HVS is the industry's primary source of hotel sales information. Its databases contain information on more than 10,000 hotel transactions and thousands of financial statements. HVS is also the most comprehensive source of hotel compensation data. As a leading authority and prolific author on the topic of hotel feasibility studies and appraisals, Mr. Rushmore has written all five textbooks and two seminars for the Appraisal Institute covering this subject. He has also authored three reference books on hotel investing and has published more than 300 articles. He writes a monthly column for Hotels magazine and is widely quoted by major business and professional publications. Mr. Rushmore lectures extensively on hotel trends and has taught hundreds of classes and seminars to more than 20,000 industry professionals. He is on the faculty of the Cornell Hotel School's professional development program. Steve Rushmore has a BS degree from the Cornell Hotel School and an MBA from the University of Buffalo.