3D Travel Acquires HulaCopter, Adds Mobile Services

3D Travel, Inc., today announced the acquisition of HulaCopter LLC, a Honolulu-based company that specializes in mobile marketing for the tourism industry. This acquisition complements 3D Travel’s existing suite of tourism marketing tools.

Honolulu (I-Newswire) July 18, 2012 - 3D Travel, Inc., the first 3D virtual travel planning platform, today announced the acquisition of HulaCopter LLC, a Honolulu-based company that specializes in mobile marketing for the tourism industry.

HulaCopter is a mobile marketing platform that connects merchants with travelers to provide a market for perishable inventory. For merchants, it increases profits with real-time discounting of distressed inventory and otherwise unsold seats or tickets. For travelers, it provides access to last-minute deals on fun activities. HulaCopter founder and CEO, Jason Rushin, will become 3D Travel’s Vice President of Marketing and Product Development as a result of the deal, and HulaCopter will be rebranded as 3D Travel Mobile.

Today, 3D Travel's unique private label platform technology provides visitor bureaus, travel wholesalers, hotels and tourist attractions with the unique ability to create and manage their own customized 3D destination experiences utilizing a proprietary 3D Content Management Solution. 3D Travel also provides these private label clients with access to its robust travel content network, with thousands of location listings and 3D video tours, video and photo galleries, local event information, and other curated recommendations. The addition of HulaCopter’s mobile marketing technology enables 3D Travel to offer clients a suite of services that target travelers once they are onsite at their vacation destination, whether directly through a 3D Travel mobile application or through client-branded, private label mobile applications.

“This acquisition allows 3D Travel to accelerate its plans to offer mobile applications and solutions to our clients and, in turn, that they can offer to their end customers. A mobile offering will allow our clients to continue the conversation with travelers while their vacation is in-process. HulaCopter’s mobile application will allow us to offer clients the ability to push real-time deals, information, and updates based on travelers’ specific interests, needs and location,” said Craig Carapelho, CEO and founder, 3D Travel, Inc. “We see incredible potential with this mobile platform and will be working quickly on the integration. We’re also excited to get the benefit of Jason’s deep mobile, technology, and marketing experience – adding this capacity to our team will enable us to move faster than ever before in an area that we believe is critical to the company’s long-term success.”

Once the HulaCopter platform is integrated with 3D Travel’s existing services, clients will be able to push content to travelers via destination and private label 3D websites as well as mobile applications. Travelers will be able to install the mobile application on their iPhone, iPad, or Android phone or tablet, where they will receive special last-minute deals on activities, entertainment and attractions, plus destination and property information. For current 3D Travel clients – hotels, timeshares, resorts, attractions, activity vendors, restaurants – the new mobile application will let them push custom-tailored last-minute deals for unsold, perishable inventory to travelers who are already on vacation.

The acquisition of HulaCopter further enables 3D Travel to deliver on its mission to provide clients the tools to push high-quality, localized information around popular destinations. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.