Choice Hotels International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels, InterContinental Hotels, Marriott International and Wyndham Hotel Group have combined to launch a new Hotel metasearch: Room Key
The formation of this venture comes as the hotel sector continues to battle with various issues around distribution and pricing on the web, including the continued roll-out of Google’s Hotel Finder service (a tool launched in July 2011 that enables Google users to search for a hotel within a destination by editing a shape on a map).
It’s a nice website with good features and user interface. However, success in the online travel space requires more than that. It is indeed very hard through Internet marketing to generate demand and it requires tremendous knowledge and even more marketing dollars. Will those players be ready to invest that kind of money in a website that is a non-core business? Let’s wait and see.
