Cheapflights has a canny PR campaign working behind the scenes to support the launch of its Zugu metasearch business – guess the logic behind the new name.
It could be a clever wheeze to get people talking about the new site in online social areas such as Twitter, especially as it has a competition attached to it.
But it isn’t the first time a consumer-facing travel company has used a seemingly unconventional, non-travel name for its brand, and some companies will go to extraordinary lengths to decide on an identity.
Microsoft, for example, spent millions on obtaining the rights to the name “Expedia” ahead of its launch in the mid-1990s. It previously belonged to a French tyre company.
The people on this list may not have gone to the same lengths, but the names come from similar levels of obscurity.
- CouchSurfing – makes sense for those in the know, otherwise a watersport/furniture mystery.
- Black Tomato – uber-trendy travel agent site.
- Boo.com – forever associated with a dot-com failure, now a trip planning site.
- Goby – travel search engine with a cute fish logo.
- Gorp – adventure-based ideas and content site.
- Hotelicopter – possibly the only site with a name inspired by desire to do a fancy launch video.
- Hotwire – Expedia-owned answer to Priceline, nothing to do with heat or electricity.
- Joobili – well-deserved darling of the seedcamps, content and inspiration site based in Hungary.
- Kayak – metasearch engine, rather than water-based activities operator.
- Mr and Mrs Smith – luxury hotel guide, no sign of 80′s indie band in sight.
- Mobissimo – Beatrice Tarka-fronted (one of only a few female CEOs in travel)Â metasearch site.
- Momondo – more travel search, but with stylish design more akin to fashion sites.
- NileGuide – not specifically about Egypt, or the River Nile. Great content site.
- Oodles – not a typo on noodles, but a clever car hire site.
- Opodo – one of the original European OTA giants, still no obvious clue to its meaning.
- Ruelala – membership-based, private sale site, nothing to do with French streets.
- Sandy Balls – UK-based camping and caravan centre, became recent internet hit.
- Seat61 – hugely popular yet randomly named rail travel site.
- Simonseeks – vanity name perhaps, brainchild of TravelSupermarket-founder Simon Nixon.
- Wayn – once explained the Where Are You Now? tagline, but then they changed strategy, and tagline.
- Tourism Federation of Wisconsin – forced to re-arrange name after WTF became web humour fodder
- Yapta – US-based, highly regarded airfare tracking site.
- Zugu – new metasearch effort from Cheapflights, no idea (yet) what it means.
- Zuji – Travelocity brand for the Australia-New Zealand market.
- Zoombu – closed-beta metasearch site, ZoombuSki offshoot also shed little light.
NB: Also worth noting the dreaded curse of “Trip”, highlighted recently by Tripology (temporarily), TripHub, TripSync et al.
Feel free to add more names in the comments section.
Related posts:
- Hold on to your hats – Cheapflights developing metasearch engine
- Cheapflights takes covers off Zugu metasearch engine
- Skyscanner brings in marketing guru, ponders new strategy for global reach
- Cheapflights tweaks search tools, adds calendar function
- Many more travel planning websites planned for 2010
WOICES – World VOICES
Isango?
@pablo – aah, indeed.
@cat – yes, a good and very obvious one.
Sandy Balls.
Good god!
Kevin – thanks for mentioning Goby. You were probably too modest to mention another travel company with an interesting name – Tnooz!
Mark
@mark – errr…
just A B2C list!
How about Moebii.com? Helpful planning site…inscrutable name
Kevin,
Thanks for the mention. Some additional thoughts about the same topic from Jared.
http://blog.joobili.com/2009/11/19/6-rules-of-naming-travel-edition/
My favorite from the old days was ByeByeNow.com which went — you guessed it — bye bye in the dot-com blaze.
Great list but Zuji should be travelocity brand, no?
@bob – our apologies. an embarrassing mistake – we were clearly caught up in the excitement of such a vast array of oddness.
Thanks for extending the list I have put together some time ago
It reminds me of the list of top 3 travel startups worst names
http://www.hotel-blogs.com/guillaume_thevenot/2009/08/the-top-5-worst-names-in-travel-startups.html?cid=6a00d83451625269e20120a4e9b545970b
Maybe you should make a vote button for people to decide who is the oddest of all…
Jucy – http://www.jucy.co.nz/. I loved working with Tim and his group – great energy, enthusiasm and attitude. It was always fun calling their operation to hear their lastest news and accent.
Compete4yourseat
The “other” car player in Australia (next to Ooodles) called VroomVroomVroom (because 2x Vroom is not enough)
@tim – Vroom suggest car, Oodles suggest, err, not quite sure…
I remember a techie site opening up to much fanfare in the late 1990s which was all about techies sharing tips and tricks. It was called Experts Exchange. Someone pointed out to them pretty quickly that http://www.expertsexchange.com really should be http://www.experts-exchange.com for clarity’s sake.
I’m not sure if I should be glad that my site isn’t there …
A
another interesting made up name is Wego.com , which is a travel search engine in Asia. Cute play on We & Go
Also new: Zazoo