Is the 'Hotelicopter' for Real? Probably Not

March 30, 2009 at 10:14 AM | by Jenna | Comments (4)

News has been, er, flying around this weekend about the "Hotelicopter," the world's first flying hotel (coming in after the airplane hotels that are no longer functioning, flying aircrafts, of course). Apparently, someone took a Soviet-made Mil V-12, renovated it and made it into an amenity-heavy hotel that flies.

According to the official website, which we found through Engadget:

The Hotelicopter features 18 luxuriously-appointed rooms for adrenaline junkies seeking a truly unique and memorable travel experience.

Each soundproofed room is equipped with a queen-sized bed, fine linens, a mini-bar, coffee machine, wireless internet access, and all the luxurious appointments you�d expect from a flying five star hotel. Room service is available one hour after liftoff and prior to landing.

Okay. Hold up.

Whoops! Someone stole a pic from Yotel!

We're going to have to call B.S. on this one. Now, the "inaugural" voyage is set for June 26, which will be followed by a California and Europe tour — but you can't contact the folks who run the heli-hotel; you can only submit your email address to get updates.

And we have a feeling that the only update you're going to get will be an email on April 1st to let you know that you've fallen victim to a fairly brilliant April Fool's prank. Most of the exterior pictures on the website don't really look like they're for realsies, the site is run off of Wordpress with no info on who is behind the operation, and the interior shots in the photo gallery? Yeah, those are images of a Yotel. Come on, you think we wouldn't know a freakin' Yotel when we saw one? Jeez.

Also, the official site is getting hit pretty hard today — you can still check out the Hotelicopter Facebook Page to get the gist of it.

Update [2009-4-2 11:18:12 by Jenna]: Turns out, Yotel was in on the whole thing and approved of the images being used for the Hotelicopter. A pretty elaborate April Fool's gag; props to all!

Comments (4)

Return to » Is the 'Hotelicopter' for Real? Probably Not

Um, has anyone ever ridden in a helicopter? They are loud. And not exactly smooth sailing.

Yup, have been up in one, very unique experience. Why has April Fool's day suddenly turned into April Fool's Week?

I went to the site (www.hotelicopter.com), and hotelicopter is a real company launching on Wednesday. If it's not a flying hotelicopter, anybody know what it could be?

No its not real. it's a cleaver way to get people to look up Hotelicopter on the internet and drive traffic towards a new search engine aimed at hotel bookings. It got me there but they missed one huge factor. If a company lies to me to get me to their site I black list them and let everyone know about it.
Also look carefully at the video. This is animation and I could get a real hotel to fly too if I used animation.

HotelChatter

Select a Destination:

Hotel News / Airplane Hotels / Hotelicopter / → All Tags