RealTime Reservation Names Ricky Castoldi Chief Sales Officer

RealTime Reservation has appointed Ricky Castoldi as Chief Sales Officer, tasking the 25-year hotel-technology veteran with global sales leadership just as the company digests its acquisition of Spanish firm Stay. Castoldi, based in Dallas, reports directly to CEO Shawn Tarter at RTR's Huntington, N.Y. headquarters.

The hire follows the Stay acquisition, which RTR positions as the trigger for its next growth phase. "With the acquisition of Stay, RTR has a bigger platform and a bigger opportunity," Tarter said, adding that Castoldi "has built and led sales teams in markets around the world and knows the hotel technology stack inside out."

Who is Castoldi and what does he sell?

Castoldi arrives from Cendyn, where he served as Chief Sales Officer and led the international sales team. Before that he launched Duetto (a revenue-management software vendor) into Latin America. His earlier stops include Lanyon, Pegasus Solutions, Dolphin Dynamics and eRevMax — a résumé that maps almost exactly onto RTR's addressable market of reservations, distribution and revenue tooling.

His record covers high-value enterprise sales across the Americas, Europe and Asia, with products spanning revenue management, content distribution, reservations processing, property management, lead management and commission processing for hotel chains, plus online booking, reservation fulfillment and data intelligence for the travel-booking channel.

"RTR is at an exciting point," Castoldi said. "The Stay acquisition broadens what we can offer hotels, and the opportunity now is to bring that to more customers in more markets." He said he aims to build a sales organization that helps hotel companies "get more from their bookings, distribution and guest engagement."

What is RTR selling, and why does it matter to operators?

RealTime Reservation sells dynamic booking technology for onsite activities, amenities and ancillary revenue — the spa slots, cabanas and experiences that sit outside the room rate but increasingly carry margin. The company describes itself as institutionally backed and high-growth, and its platform spans reservations, pre-arrival planning and on-property experiences under a single system.

For operators, the pitch is economic rather than experiential: unified management of ancillary revenue streams plus branded mobile and web channels through which guests book services and transact during the stay. The Stay deal widens that product set; Castoldi's job is to push it into more markets. Whether a Spanish acquisition plus an American sales chief can produce that expansion is now a measurable question, and RTR has chosen someone whose career suggests he knows how to count.

Castoldi started in the industry at 14, working in his father's hotel. He holds a BA (Hons) in European Business Studies from Buckinghamshire University and the University of Bergamo, is a graduate of Accel-KKR's Ascend leadership program, and speaks English, Spanish and Italian.

Expect the first test of the appointment in deal flow: multi-market chain contracts that turn Stay's European footprint into RTR revenue.