Shri Lildharrie

Twenty-plus years across travel, marketing, and the wedding industry — from running the travel vertical at TheKnot.com to building hotel websites worldwide at the agency NextGuest (HEBS Digital), where he met his LOVU co-founder.

Those years made one pattern impossible to ignore: couples planning honeymoons and destination weddings were everywhere, every property wanted them, and yet there was no channel built for romance travel. Hotels reached those couples by renting attention from the OTAs — one expensive click at a time.

Shri started LOVU to fix that — the first marketplace built only for romance travel, plus the family of AI products around it that let hotels, advisors, and destinations capture that demand directly, without the OTA tax.

Based out of New York, he is still chasing the thing he has chased his whole career: more direct bookings for the people who actually host the trip.