'Hotelicopter' is Actually a New Hotel Search Engine. Oh.
Okay. So. The Hotelicopter — which, in its originally-marketed form, was touted as the "world's first flying hotel" — was initially an April Fool's Hoax. We called it out, and our suspicions were confirmed when the whole thing was outed as a joke — but something curious happened. The images used in the prank were lifted from Yotel's website, and someone at Yotel sort of made it sound like the whole thing was a Yotel marketing campaign when they spoke to some journalists — when in reality, while it generated plenty of publicity for Yotel, Hotelicopter was actually a totally separate company that had just used Yotel's cooperation in this viral marketing campaign. Got it?
So Hotelicopter — the real company called Hotelicopter, who had devised this whole flying-hotel joke to generate buzz and drag the word "hotelicopter" onto our screens — actually launched today.
And guess what it is? Oh, it's a hotel booking site. Kind of anti-climactic since it's, you know, not really as cool as a flying hotel, but we still think it was an absolutely brilliant way to launch.
The site functions similar to Kayak.com. That is, when you search for a hotel on Hotelicopter, the site will "go out and compare pricing and availability in real time from over 30 different travel sites, including online travel agencies, consolidators, and hotel sites. The rates and availability displayed on hotelicopter are exactly what you’d find searching each individual site." So Hotelicopter doesn't have any actual inventory of its own, it just makes it easier for you to find the lowest price on a hotel without having to check a dozen different sites.
That said, we think TechCrunch summed it up the best: "All in all, it seems to work well, but there just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot distinguishing Hotelicopter from other sites like Kayak. That said, the people behind Hotelicopter clearly have a good sense of humor (and marketing), so they may be able to make a name for themselves in the crowded space." We think so too.
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