Internet start-up RealTime Hotel Reports LLC sells a unique product that may make its partners rich some day. It collects and sells sophisticated information about the lodging industry via the World Wide Web -- making it a single source of information designed specifically to enhance hotels' success in the highly competitive industry.

Just as important: the financial prospects of the 35 students who work at RealTime have already improved. Nearly half of RealTime's 67 employees are students, most of them from Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. With better-than-average hourly wages and a real opportunity to learn about the hotel industry, it's a great part-time job to have when you're preparing for a career in the industry, says Phil Auerbach. A junior in the Hotel School, from Lexington, Mass., he has been working for RealTime since January 1999.

"It's the 90s, and the whole interest in Internet startups drew me in," said Auerbach. Like most student employees at RealTime, Auerbach started as a part-time data specialist, calling hotels around the country to solicit and verify information to augment the company's vast database. His acuity about the industry soon got him promoted to senior data specialist -- part of a team of five who train, supervise, and guide the data specialists in collecting the most accurate information possible for the database. He also doubles as senior research specialist -- recommending what information RealTime might collect that would be useful to industry professionals. He fits in both jobs part time between studies.

"We're really not like any other company. We're unique," said Carrie Fleming, a Hotel School junior from Westborough, Mass., whose company loyalty rivals her school spirit. The company bills its highly sophisticated web site as one-stop shopping for clients, the only source for vital information, such as how well they are doing compared to competitors on a given day, week, month or year and where it's appropriate to expand a property or build a new one, said Fleming. Clients can also zero in on articles on an array of lodging-industry topics -- from evaluating the crime risk around a property to who's who at the top at Four Seasons hotels -- and order reports customized to their special needs.

Like Auerbach, Fleming started as a data specialist but now works on special projects, designing and fine-tuning the customized reports from her campus computer and communicating with RealTime via e-mail. She has a demanding course load this semester, so the flexible work arrangement is ideal.

A high-tech startup venue often gives students an opportunity to have their ideas taken seriously. Amy Buckwalter, a Hotel School junior from Yardley, Pa., now the recruiting manager for all of RealTime's student hires, said: "The projects I've been assigned have constantly pushed me to learn about new areas and empowered me to take ownership of my projects and run with them." The experience has helped reinforce some of the material she is learning in class, she added, and should come in handy when she looks for work as a professional human resources manager in the hospitality industry after graduation.

Although RealTime's student employees can work as hard as its permanent staff, the company culture makes what they do seem more like play. "It's a young company, very informal," said Auerbach. "They pretty much told me not to wear a tie for my interview. And when Kong" -- the black Labrador retriever owned by Brian Ferguson, the company's founder and president -- "comes to the office, I always stop and play with him."

College communities can be great places for high-tech start-ups, said Ferguson. "The Hotel School is the reason we moved to Ithaca." The students, he says, are "terrific." And having a resource like Cornell nearby "enables us to hire motivated young people who already understand the industry. A "hotelie" himself, Ferguson graduated from the school's master's degree program in 1995 and launched the company in 1997 to fill what he saw as a niche.

Start-ups can help students gain knowledge that's not yet available in the industry in general or the classroom. For example, industry experts often say that there are, at most, 35,000 hotels in the United States. But RealTime researchers have already uncovered an additional 25,000, revealing just how poorly documented statistics on U.S. hotels have been until now.

All three students believe that they are now in a better position to attract prime job offers because of their experience at RealTime. "Working for RealTime has given me a great foundation," said Fleming. "Already my knowledge base has surpassed what some people out there know." But more than that, "it has given me the confidence to succeed."

"I don't know any other jobs where you get this kind of exposure" to the skills you'll need, said Auerbach, who hopes to go into real estate finance or consulting when he graduates.

To access RealTime's site, see the web site address list below.