Guest-Guide Business Has Been Hospitable to Couple

Rick O’Bryant and his wife, Jan, have traveled to Cancun, Jamaica, Hawaii and Australia.

They have taken in the sights and sounds of these places. They have visited the beaches, tasted the cuisine. And perhaps most important, they have studied the in-room guest guides at the hotels.

After all, guest guides represent a good portion of their lives.

The O’Bryants, Rick with a marketing background and Jan with a prior career in real estate, are co-owners of Direct Access International of Thousand Oaks.

With a staff of two sales agents and a graphic designer, the O’Bryants create in-room guest books for 14 hotels, mostly in Ventura County.

The publishing and marketing firm recently completed work on its guides for the Westlake Village Inn, the Embassy Suites Mandalay Beach resort in Oxnard and the Radisson Hotel in Agoura Hills. At the start of 1998, the company will update its guide for the Doubletree Hotel in Ventura.

“We started a company with an emphasis on marketing and creating images for different clients,” Rick O’Bryant said. “A friend who owned Howard Johnson’s (now the Thousand Oaks Inn) called and said, ‘I need something.’ ”

That was about five years ago, and since then, the company has built a business out of such guides.

Each of the hotel books, updated every year to 18 months, has listings for dining, shopping, recreation, transportation and relocation assistance within a 5-mile radius from a given hotel. Each hotel also includes its own information.

“There was a lack of something like this--everything was fragmented, nobody had anything that said, ‘Here is what’s near us, what you can do and not get lost in town,’ ” said Rick.

“We help guests not only to know where they are, but what is here and how to get the most use out of the area,” he said. “It encourages them to come back or sometimes to stay a little longer.”

Direct Access International does not charge the hotels for its work. Instead, all the revenue comes from the sale of ad space.

Since establishing the business with in-room guides, the husband-and-wife operation also has designed and created hotel wedding planners, newsletters, chamber of commerce maps and restaurant menus.