Just recently we reported about the different possibilities how Pokémon GO could benefit the tourism industry. After breaking the record number of 100 million users in less than four weeks on the market, the hype is still on-going as it seems. Now, several tourism providers have started to cater to an apparent need that customers have developed.
Now there is a claim made by Australian hotel group Mantra to be the first Pokémon friendly hotel in the world, where players are ‘lured’ with free lure modules, free fries with drinks and special happy hour prices on drinks. 
RyanSolutions conducted some research in more than 5000 hotels in the US last month, and identified that there were days when approximately 9.2% of the monitored hotels were mentioning Pokémon GO on their social media channels, indicating that they all want to profit off the craze that Pokémon GO is.
Accomodation meta search engine AllTheRooms has implemented a so-called PokéView into their search results. The view falls in line with their List View and their Map View. In the PokéView hotel properties are listed with the number of gyms and PokéStops nearby, and also which Pokémon can be found in the vinicity of the accommodation. The founder Bill Beckler says that “the datasets include crowdsourced data collected by us and by other sites, and data that was gathered directly from the Niantic API that the app uses.”
And last but not least, in cooperation with the agency FadeOut, the Basel tourism board has created a prank video where a few people dressed up as the Pokémon Pikachu are seeking revenge with the players, throwing gigantic PokéBalls at them. The video was released in the afternoon on the 2nd of November and has already gained over 35 million views, with a lot of positive feedback. During the clip, watchers are not only entertained with hilarious situations, but also get to watch the entire action in front of some of the cities most notable attractions. On top of that, Basel Tourism have also created a landing page that is entirely dedicated to Pokémon GO.
Roman Egger
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