Cortiva Group Expands Board of Directors; Cortiva Group announces addition of Atef N. Mankarios to its group of dynamic industry leaders.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 23, 2004

Atef N. Mankarios, former President and Chief Executive Officer of St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, has joined Cortiva Group, the pioneer and leader in the spa services industry, as a member of its Board of Directors, which includes Mr. Richard Cohen, President and CEO of Ermenegildo Zegna, USA; Mr. Bill Fields, formerly CEO of Blockbuster and formerly CEO of Wal-Mart, Stores Division; and Mr. Peter Kash, Managing Director of Paramount Capital. The announcement was made today by Mr. Alan Clingman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cortiva Group.

Cortiva Group has launched a pioneering concept in spa and massage services that will revolutionize the highly fragmented, $14 billion spa services industry, filling a void that exists in hotels, health clubs, spas, country clubs and hospitals nationwide. Cortiva Group created the first "spa services network" of uniformed, highly trained, professional massage therapists in the United States, establishing an unprecedented benchmark of excellence in educational standards, practices and techniques for an industry that lacks both a systematic and qualitative approach. Cortiva Group's national network massage therapists will be available anytime, anywhere to hotels, health clubs, spas, country clubs and hospitals both on a contract basis and on a just-in-time basis, with as little as 90 minutes notice, 24 x 7. This enables every hotel room to become a "virtual treatment room." Cortiva Group's mission is three-fold: to provide human resources and scalable staffing to spas, hotels, health clubs and residential communities; to provide seamless and scalable spa services to hotels including the ability to turn every hotel room into a massage treatment room; and to optimize the earnings potential, productivity and flexibility for independent massage therapists

"Atef Mankarios is considered one of the most renowned and respected professionals in the luxury hospitality industry," said Mr. Clingman. "He will make an invaluable contribution to the development of the Cortiva brand."

"I am delighted to join the Board of Directors of Cortiva Group and look forward to contributing to its future success," said Mr. Atef Mankarios. "Cortiva Group is a unique opportunity and an innovative business paradigm. There is a burgeoning demand for spa services in the hospitality marketplace, yet the ability for individual spas to optimize or match their labor requirements with available talent on a dynamic basis is limited and inefficient. Also, not all hotels have their own spa facilities and cannot easily build them into existing infrastructure without radical or expensive construction. Cortiva Group represents both the most viable solution to these challenges and a critical competitive advantage for the hospitality industry."

Over the course of more than two decades, Mr. Mankarios has established an outstanding reputation as a pioneer, a visionary and a hands-on manager who has developed iconic brands and properties, as well as redefined the prevailing concepts within the hospitality industry of personal experience, personalized service, residential hospitality, elegance and sophistication.

One of the world's preeminent hoteliers, Mr. Mankarios joined Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, Inc., in 1985, and became managing director first of The Remington in Houston and, two years later, The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas. He is credited with The Mansion's transformation to its five-star standing as well as its 1991 ranking as "Number One Hotel in the United States" by Zagat's US Travel Survey. In 1989, Mr. Mankarios was appointed president and CEO of Rosewood. Mr. Mankarios was the driving force behind the renowned management company's dynamic growth and development, and most importantly, created its incomparable standards of excellence. He oversaw the creation and/or management of some of the world's most prestigious hotels, including The Lanesborough, London (now a St. Regis), Hotel Bel Air, Los Angeles, Las Ventanas al Paraiso, Los Cabos, and Rosewood's Caribbean properties, which included Caneel Bay, La Sammana and Little Dix Bay, as well as developments in Indonesia, Japan, the Middle East and Panama.

In 1998, Mr. Mankarios realized his entrepreneurial dream when he formed Foresthills Hotels & Resorts, an international hotel management company that developed, managed, operated and provided technical services for various luxury properties worldwide. In 2001, the Foresthills team was acquired by Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Mr. Mankarios was appointed president and CEO of Starwood's St. Regis Hotels subsidiary, with a mandate is to establish St. Regis as the foremost luxury hotel company in the world, which he did.

In January 2004, Mr. Mankarios left Starwood to enter the entrepreneurial world again by starting a consulting business and joined the board of Cortiva Group. He holds a Bachelor of Arts and an L.L.B. in law, has completed courses at Cornell University School of Hotel Management and is a past-chairman of the board of Preferred Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

About Cortiva Group

At Cortiva Group, our mission is to create efficiency in the highly fragmented, $14 billion spa industry by becoming a trusted and branded third party provider of scalable services. Cortiva will achieve this goal by building a national network of uniformed, highly trained, professional massage therapists that will be made available anytime, anywhere to hotels, health clubs, spas, country clubs and hospitals both on a contract basis and on a just-in-time basis, with as little as 90 minutes notice, 24 x 7; to enable every hotel room in the Cortiva Group coverage area to become a "virtual treatment room"; to establish the most rigorous set of standards and practices for massage therapists; to acquire, operate and manage schools of massage therapists under a national brand that will provide, for the first time, a foundation for continued growth in the industry and will be at the forefront of training leaders for years to come; and to develop superior, branded products for use in massage therapy and body treatments. We view ourselves as a critical competitive advantage for businesses in the spa, hospitality and health care industries, both in terms of excellent service and profitability, by providing these services on a more qualitative, cost effective and omnipresent basis than the industries could do themselves.