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Major hotel brands band together to launch RoomKey.com

What do you get when six of the world's leading hotel brands come together? You get RoomKey.com, a new hotel search engine that launched on Wednesday.
Choice Hotels International, InterContinental Hotels Group, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Marriott International, and Wyndham Hotel Group form the group of six that created RoomKey.com, a simple search tool that allows travelers to search for hotels by date and location, then delivers results that can be sorted by price, distance, hotel name, and star rating. Room Key users can toggle search results to view them on a grid, in a list, or on a map.
At first glance, Room Key's format appears to be modeled on Google Hotel Finder, the hotel search engine that Google unveiled last summer. Like Hotel Finder, Room Key results link to the hotels' websites rather than a third-party booking site, thereby ensuring "a personalized and welcoming experience that offers flexibility, accuracy, and benefits of booking with the hotel companies' proprietary sites," according to Shafiq Khan, senior vice president of ecommerce, Marriott International. Choice Hotels International's Senior Vice President of Global Distribution Robert McDowell added, "We at Choice are thrilled to be a part of Room Key alongside these five other global hotel companies. In the face of a staggering number of online booking options, our goal is to make the experience of finding the right hotel as personal and enjoyable as the experience of staying in one."
Room Key's beta launch includes only U.S. hotels, but that should change in a future iteration of the site given the vast inventory of properties available under Room Key's six partners. Also look for the site to expand with more user reviews, comparison tools, and social sharing of travel plans.
Filed under: North America, United States, Hotels and Accommodations, Internet Tools












Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tom Costello Jan 13th 2012 12:56PM
I've broken down the Roomkey.com website page by page and my analysis is now available at bit.ly/ysu3y3
tom Jan 31st 2012 11:33AM
It will be interesting to see if RoomKey will be able to keep a startup speed growth with such large backers.
It seems like there is suddenly a bunch of hotel search engine growth and innovation. HipMunk are making a funky UI, and HotelSweep are going direct like RoomKey but using information extraction to cover all hotels not just partners.
And I wonder if RoomKey can beat their best rate guarantees they have with other sites.