Co-founder & CEO, Tablet Hotels

Laurent left his native France as soon as he began working. Since then, he has lived in seven countries and visited over ninety. A graduate of Supélec in Paris and Insead, he spent the first 10 years of his career developing new markets for global giants Michelin and The News Corporation as an expatriate. In 1998, he moved from Asia to New York City for a chance to play a role in the Internet revolution. After a year with web agency Razorfish, he left to become an entrepreneur, co-founded Tablet in 2000 and has run it ever since.

Through his nomadic existence, Laurent has seen the inside of too many hotel rooms to count -- but along the way, he has developed an acute sense of what a great hotel experience is all about. In the mid-nineties, at the height of his corporate frequent flyer days, Laurent saw the roots of a global hotel renaissance. Entrepreneurs in various parts of the world were paving a way out of the dark age of the cookie-cutter chains. They created hotel experiences where architecture, design, food, music and local culture all played a role. These pioneers quickly and collectively influenced an entire industry by trying to outdo each other. This inspired Laurent to create Tablet the definitive source for those who want more out of a hotel than just a place to sleep.

Though innovation and word of mouth, Tablet has emerged as the world's leading travel lifestyle website, with its highly curated and vigorously independent selection of the world's most inspiring hotels.

With over 2,000 hotels handpicked across a wide range of styles and prices in more than 100 countries, the site now serves well over a million fans in nine languages. The core mission of Tablet is and always was editorial - starting with putting together the definitive Global Guide to Unique Hotels. From its inception, Tablet innovated by merging editorial and commerce - building an online travel agency within the guide. The online travel agency was the most effective way to maintain the necessary integrity to create a trustworthy reference for travelers. In addition, it provides travelers the convenience of finding the right hotel and booking it all on the same website. For this novel approach to work, Tablet had to guarantee the best prices - and it does.

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