Inoqo Corporate Blog

Onward and upward

October 16th, 2009

Firstly a big thank you for all the support since we launched. We’re hearing both guests and hotels complimenting us on an innovative service - we aim to exceed your expectations.

While we’re working on some interesting new features, some great hotels have been coming on board and adding wonderful offers. Remember, all our offers are true last-moment, offering excellent value.

We’ve also been humbled by the number of potential partners who have approached us. We look forward to working with you to achieve our core mission: increasing hotel occupancy, and delivering fantastic value to our guests.

As always, we welcome your feedback, thoughts, and queries.

Team Inoqo

Picture: Kevin Dooley

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One week in - a quick update

September 30th, 2009

Wow, what a week!

When we started this project, we were told there was a need in the industry. The economic down turn had hit the accomodation industry hard, and clearly the patterns of travelers had changed - possibly permanently.

What if we could connect these potential guests with hotels offering real last-moment deals, and distribute those offers in real-time?

The response has been overwhelming. We’re excited to be bringing on new fantastic hotels every day, in all parts of the world. We’re connecting with potential partners, have been featured in a major national news media (online and offline), and the buzz on Twitter itself is starting to build.

Our aim is to make the Inoqo the best answer to the last-moment hotel problem. We have an exciting roadmap for how to deliver on that as we grow - this is just the beginning.

Thank you for your support so far. If your hotel currently has rooms going empty, we’d love the opportunity to bring you more business - create a hotel manager account here. For travelers, I really invite you to follow our Twitter streams for your favorite cities - you never know when we’re going to publish that perfect package!

Any feedback or questions? Just drop us a line and we’ll get back to you asap.

Image by wools

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Hi and Welcome!

September 21st, 2009

Hi and welcome to the first post of the Inoqo blog! We have just launched Inoqo.com in beta and look forward to your comments/suggestions on our brand new service.

Inoqo is a last-moment social media hotel booking engine. We only have true last-moment hotel packages and use Twitter to get them to travelers in real-time. It’s easy to use, and free. All our deals go live 48 hours before check-in and this makes Inoqo perfect for when you need to book a hotel room at short notice.

Each of our destination cities has a dedicated Twitter stream, which we call a CityStream. We have developed a standard format for our Twitter accounts: the format is “2″ followed by the city name, and then “hotels”. For example “2NewYorkHotels” or “2LondonHotels”. (In some cases where the city name is longer than 8 letters we have shortened “hotels”). To take advantage of the offers in a CityStream, all you need to do is follow the destination CityStream via http://www.inoqo.com/Home/CityStreams .

Inoqo is a utility – you can turn us on when you need a last-moment hotel and turn us off when you have found the right offer for you. It is a win-win for travellers and hotels. Our customers get unique last minute offers, and our hotel partners can sell rooms that would otherwise have gone empty.

Here are some examples of where bookers will call on us:

Business travelers are able to save money and find a room, even on very short notice.
Holiday makers going on an unplanned vacation at the last-moment.

We started developing the site just as Twitter’s growth was really taking off; hotels were becoming increasingly active but were struggling to achieve sales success on Twitter. The key issues from our initial research into hotels on Twitter are still as valid now, as they were 6 months ago:

Twitter has significant potential as a brand communications and CRM tool.
Most hotels struggle to build a significant follower base on Twitter.
The majority of a hotel’s followers are not in immediate need of a hotel room.
Hotels have yet to generate significant revenues through Twitter.

We have just taken the first step in developing a platform that fills these gaps. Inoqo allows hotels to target “active buyers” who are specifically looking to travel to their city and need a hotel room within the next 48 hours.

The deals and packages that you will find on our site are from the 30 launch hotels listed below. We are very excited to go live with hotels from the USA, Europe with France, Portugal, England, Scotland, Ireland and South Africa and we plan to expand our hotel coverage to all the major cities in these territories. If your destination city isn’t yet up on our site let us knowhttp://www.inoqo.com/Contact! We’ll get straight onto it.

Absolute Hotel Limerick www.twitter.com/2LimerickHotels

Apex City of London Hotel London www.twitter.com/2LondonHotels

Apex City Quay Hotel & Spa Dundee www.twitter.com/2DundeeHotels

Apex European Hotel Edinburgh www.twitter.com/2EdinburghHotel

Apex International Hotel Edinburgh www.twitter.com/2EdinburghHotel

Apex London Hotel Edinburgh www.twitter.com/2EdinburghHotel

Apex Waterloo Place Edinburgh www.twitter.com/2EdinburghHotel

Beacon Hotel Miami Miami www.twitter.com/2MiamiHotels

Beacon Hotel Washington DC Washington DC www.twitter.com/2WashingtonDCH

Calders Hotel & Convention Cape Town www.twitter.com/2CapeTownHotels

Canary Hotel Santa Barbara www.twitter.com/2SantaBarbaraH

Chesterfield Hotel Palm Beach www.twitter.com/2PalmBeachHotel