Would you love to see what your hotel looks like before you go on vacation? Then surf on over to www.HotelView.com and see what you’re missing.
Hotelview.com is both the marketing and the distribution website for Hotelview Corporation, a division of Onstream Media Corp. Onstream Media Corp. specializes in developing internet streaming applications and solutions to the entertainment industry.
Hotelview.com claims to have the world’s largest travel and tourism video distribution library. These videos are two- to four-minute high-quality video vignettes produced by Onstream for individual hotels. If you’ve ever used the Internet to virtually tour a house that is for sale, then you’ll be familiar with the concept behind HotelView.com. If have yet to do that, not to worry. Think of these videos as a long-form commercials.
Streaming an inside glimpse of the hotel’s accommodations, amenities, recreation, and entertainment options is a logical use of the Internet. Sitesurfers can preview their rooms, experience the views and get a flavor of the hotel’s overall atmosphere without having to rely on the advice of some random reviewer. For hoteliers, it may represent a cheaper option than running commercials in separate markets around the globe.
HotelView.com packages each hotel video with locale maps, a representative sample of nearby attractions and airports. Two other nice features of HotelView.com are the ability to check rates and availability; and to surf straight over to the hotel’s website and contact it directly.
While HotelView.com offers video tours of certain hotels and resorts from all over the planet, do not mistake that for meaning it has videos of all hotels and resorts all over the world. Videos are available for hotels in 40 of the 50 United States, but for only one hotel in all of Canada. Mexico has 16 hotels in the HotelView.com library, but no hotel videos are available for any Central American country, and of all the countries in South America, only one hotel is offered in Argentina, Chile and Panama each. Brazil has four hotels listed.
Perhaps this is most useful for folks traveling to the Carribean, the U.K. and Europe. Percentage-wise, the most number of hotel videos listed are represented in these global regions.
In summary, HotelView.com is a useful tool for previewing hotels prior to booking them. It currently has limited functionality due relatively small hotel video library it currently possesses. HotelView.com does have great potential to become a popular travel destination site as more hotel videos come online. It is only offered in one language, English, so its global utility is limited by that.
On the DotComDish! scale, www.hotelview.com rates an “E” for everybody.
