Internet News: Since the dawn of the dot-com era, Yahoo has had a billboard near the entrance to the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Patterned after motel signs of the 1950s, it says, “Yahoo: A nice place to stay on the Internet.”
Thanks to a deal with Sheraton Hotels announced on Monday, Yahoo is making a nice place to stay in hotel lobbies.
In what the companies said was an industry first, the hotelier and the online media company have teamed to create a co-branded Web portal and branded Internet lounges in Sheraton hotels.
Yahoo Link @ Sheraton was based on insights about the behavior of hotel guests, according to Murray Gaylord, Yahoo vice president of brand marketing.
“Sheraton was seeing more and more of their users spending time in the lobby on their computers,” Gaylord said. “People just don’t always want to hang out in their rooms, they want some kind of social interaction.”
