Qantas beats pest controller to launch hooroo.com
Qantas is jumping into Australia’s competitive online accommodation market with the launch of a “social travel site” named Hooroo.
Hooroo will launch this Wednesday, 18 July 2012, with “untold stories, inside tips and thousands of places to stay in Australia at awesome rates… and that’s just for starters. We’re here to inspire travel and to help you find the perfect place to stay on your next trip.”
Hooroo, which proclaims itself “a new kind of travel website”, is already live and taking email registrations but is giving little else away.
“Give us a few days while we add some finishing touches and put the last of our pictures up,” the site continues, “then we’ll let you know when we go live. Travel is always more fun with friends, so feel free to tell yours all about us.”
Hooroo is a distinctively Australian way of saying goodbye, so it’s a good name. And crucially, Qantas has beaten another enterprise, Hooroo Pest Control, to registering hooroo.com.
Hooroo Pest Control, a Sydney eastern suburbs outfit, is run by a bloke named Neil. The pest control firm advertises on the web that its proprietor has “a very good knowledge of general pest, rodent, bird control/proofing and bed bugs and makes use of low toxic chemicals”.
“Hooroo Pest Control – No Fuss, Reasonable Price”, the online ad goes, offering to get rid of ants, bed bugs, bees, birds, cockroaches, fleas, possums, rodents, silverfish, spiders, termites, vermin and wasps.
Battling bed bugs, ants, rats and fleas appears to have kept Neil so busy that he didn’t register hooroo.com or hooroo.com.au. Domain names are registered on a “first come, first served” basis and now Qantas has those. The travel industry and general public will be learning more about Hooroo (the travel site rather than the pest control firm) soon.
Written by : Peter Needham
