In December 2008, Habbo's Russian community announced it was closing in February 2009 as a result of low numbers. Customers in China were redirected to other Habbo communities. The challenging Chinese market and high operational costs led to the decision of closing the service. In August 2007, Habbo's Chinese community closed down temporarily, the first time a Habbo website has closed. In May 2006, the service, along with its domain names, were changed from (.co.uk. It has since been expanded to over 31 countries in five continents, including Hotelli Kultakala in Finland which was made into a Habbo Hotel and has been invested in by venture capitalists. The next hotel was launched in Switzerland a few months later, in four languages. It featured a new credits system with community and safety features. The new hotel exited beta a few weeks afterwards, aimed at the teenage market, with marketing and payment partners in place, run from a HQ in London. By the end of January 2001, Habbo Hotel had been launched in beta mode. It launched in August 2000 on the ISP's web portal.Īapo, Sampo and Dee Edwards, an entrepreneur from the UK, wanted to create an international business based on the virtual hotel concept, drafting a plan in Autumn 2000, and raised finance. Hotel Goldfish) with a small team of developers. After having been contracted to design a virtual game and chat called Lumisota (Snow Wars) for a Finnish internet service provider, they were contracted for another project. It was a virtual chat room running on Aapo's Fuse technology.
Habbo stemmed from a 1999 hobby project by creative designer Sampo Karjalainen and technologist Aapo Kyrölä entitled Mobiles Disco, for a Finnish band.
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