Tharaldson owns and operates 319 hotels across the country, and was ranked #7 in Hotel & Motel Management�s 2000 �Top Management Companies� Survey.  The company is the largest franchisor of Marriott-branded properties.  Buckhead America has aggressively grown its Country Hearth Inns lodging system and its Lodgekeeper Group management company by more than 30-percent in the past year with another 40 currently in development.

hsupply.com is reinventing the entire procurement process for both of these companies by replacing the traditional labor, paper, and process-intensive procedure of ordering supplies, with an automated process that enables hotel managers to centralize their procurement activities through one e-commerce solution.  This means that they can count on one vendor relationship to take responsibility and control of every step in the supply chain.

�The addition of Tharaldson and Buckhead America to the hsupply.com family marks a significant milestone for us and is a testament to the acceleration of our membership in the past four months,� said Larry Hall, hsupply.com president and chief operating officer.  �With a customer base of 1,000 properties strong and growing, hsupply.com is leading the hospitality industry in the next generation of e-procurement by providing the only solution of its kind that manages the entire supply chain.�

Currently, hsupply.com has agreements with properties that represent more than 25 leading hotel brands including Marriott- and Hilton-branded properties, Holiday Inn, Radisson, Ramada and Comfort Inn.

Unlike other procurement solutions, which just match buyers with multiple suppliers, and then leave them to work out fulfillment and settlement, the hsupply.com marketplace is a �next generation� web-based procurement solution that is customized to be the only resource hotels need to meet all of their procurement needs.  hsupply.com remains the one point of contact for all customer care needs including supply selection, ordering, delivery, invoicing and payment.  Additionally, other e-procurement solutions either tax their members, or charge a transaction fee, for using their services.  There are no fees attached to any e-commerce transaction made with hsupply.com.

�hsupply.com has dramatically revolutionized the way the hospitality industry does business, by taking hold of the procurement process at the hotel level and providing a solution by which managers can better oversee and maintain their properties,� said Gary Tharaldson, founder and CEO of Tharaldson Companies.  �Before, we were overwhelmed with an incredibly time consuming manual process of having to input orders from our 319 hotels across the country.  Now, with our hsupply.com customized Marketplace, managers get a one-stop shop for all of their procurement needs, but more importantly, they have greater control over the procurement of their goods and services while saving time and money.�

�Our hotel properties pride themselves on providing unparalleled customer satisfaction, which is why the choice to turn all our e-procurement needs over to hsupply.com was an easy one,� said Doug Collins, Buckhead America chairman and CEO.  �Not only does hsupply.com automate the entire procurement process -- allowing our property managers the ability to focus their time and efforts on providing a more positive guest experience�but it�s the only solution of its kind that shares a standard of excellence similar to ours, through the complete round-the-clock customer service and care it offers to all our properties.�

The Tharaldson Marketplace and the Buckhead America Marketplace will provide hotel managers with centralized procurement sites that meet the unique requisition, ordering and fulfillment needs of all their hotel brands.

About Tharaldson
Tharaldson Companies, established in 1982, builds and operates limited service hotels across the United States.  Tharaldson Development Co., Inc., the largest developer of new hotels, has under construction or in some phase of development between 30 and 40 hotel projects.  Tharaldson Property Management Inc., the largest independent hotel property management company, operates under contract more than 319 hotels in 31 states to serve its customer base.

About Buckhead America
Buckhead America is a diversified hospitality services company whose holdings include the Country Hearth Inn mid-priced hotel chain, Lodgekeeper Group management company, hotels, hotel loans, hotel management contracts and other hospitality-related assets.  Buckhead America common shares trade on the NASDAQ National Market system under the symbol �BUCK.�

About hsupply.com
hsupply.com is a leading B2B e-services company that is reinventing
procurement for the $16 billion hospitality supplies industry.  Its unique Next.0� approach integrates the power of the Internet, customer relationship management and comprehensive supply chain management into a seamless, one-source destination site�the hsupply.com Marketplace�to allow product selection, ordering, fulfillment, tracking, payment, and reporting to be performed via one easy-to-use tool.  Designed to meet the disparate needs of hotel buyers, franchisors and suppliers, the hsupply.com Marketplace facilitates the entire procurement process from search to settlement.

Among hsupply.com�s differentiators is its development of custom marketplaces for management companies and franchisors to help ensure that the quality standards that maintain brand image are consistently met.  The marketplaces manage purchase order and invoice approval routing and control transactions between buyers from multiple hotel brands and suppliers with different contractual agreements.

The Atlanta-based company was founded in 1999 by e-commerce expert and best-selling author Dr. Ravi Kalakota and boasts an executive management team with more than more than 100 years of combined hospitality and technology industry experience.