Road Scholar Selects PEAK 15 Tour Operator Software

CARLSBAD, CA— October 12th, 2011 — PEAK 15 Systems announced today that the educational travel pioneer Road Scholar has selected the PEAK 15 tour operator software system as its next-generation tour management platform.

"Road Scholar arranges thousands of land- and ship-based educational programs every year and we needed a better way to manage the costing, pricing and financial performance process," said Lowell Partridge, CFO of Road Scholar. "We also wanted a more efficient way to manage vendor contracts and exchange information with vendors."

Joseph Curl, VP of Program Administration and Operations at Road Scholar, added: "Over time our local offices had created their own unique systems and procedures for assembling costs, sending contracts and paying vendors. We scoped out building a centralized system ourselves but were impressed with the core features of PEAK 15, its ability to integrate with our existing systems and the industry knowledge of their team."

Once rolled out, PEAK 15 will allow program managers at Road Scholar to:

• Create tour budgets online and quickly generate and send contracts to vendors
• Track and view all payments made to vendors, including on-trip expenses
• Analyze projected and actual financial results throughout the lifecycle of the tour

“It seems so simple, but having tour planning and management tools available in a secure way to people working in branch offices, home offices or even from the road is a big deal to organizations like Road Scholar,” said James O’Leonard, CEO of PEAK 15 Systems. “It will allow them to expand their educational travel mission and not bog down their IT resources.”

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Founded in 2005, PEAK 15 Systems, Inc. provides over 100 tour operators, outfitters and travel suppliers with integrated trip planning, marketing, booking/reservations, operations and accounting automation as an easy-to-use and affordable online service. PEAK 15 Systems is a Registered Microsoft Partner and member of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program, which identifies high-potential startups developing software on the Microsoft platform and fosters their success. PEAK 15 is also a founding member of the OpenTravel Alliance Tour Operator Project Team (www.opentravel.org), which develops technical standards to allow Tour Operators to participate in the global online travel ecosystem.

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Road Scholar educational adventures are created by Elderhostel, Inc, the not-for-profit leader in educational travel since 1975. Road Scholar offers more than 7,000 educational tours in all 50 states and 150 countries. Alongside local and renowned experts, participants experience in-depth and behind-the-scenes learning opportunities, from cultural tours and study cruises to walking, biking and more.