Expedia is giving away Joe Jonas' hand in weird attempt to quell post-COVID travel anxiety
As COVID restrictions continue to ease up (sometimes prematurely), a lot more people are going to start coming up with excuses to travel, which naturally means that a lot of people are going to be getting on planes for the first time in at least a year. Expedia has seen studies that say a lot of travelers are going to be nervous about heading back out into the world, and so the company has landed on a… uniquely bizarre solution. The premise of the bit is that Expedia wants potential travelers to know that it’s offering up a “helping hand,” which it decided to literalize by producing 250 exact replicas of Joe Jonas’ right hand that you can carry for comfort while traveling. It’s like having Joe Jonas there to hold your hand, except the rest of his body isn’t there and he can’t talk and the hand can’t move. Hey, maybe you prefer it that way, you’ll get no judgment here. We’re just saying it’s weird.
Anyway, if you want one of these hands, you just have to fill out some information at the Expedia website. Just so you know, though, they are explicitly being given on a “first come, first served basis,” so there’s a good chance all of the hands have already been snatched up celebrity hand collectors and anyone trying to jazz up their Hey Arnold!-esque shrine to the Jonas Brothers. If you’re still on the fence, Expedia says each of the hands was made with a 3D printer and “stereolithography technology,” with every hand getting painted with “custom artwork.” Each one is also hand-numbered and signed by Jonas, in case an exact replica of his hand wasn’t already special enough.
As is always the case with weird giveaways like this: Please tell us if you win one of these so we can ask you some important questions (like “Why?” and “What?” and “Who?”). Also, Expedia is donating $100,000 to Mercy Corps to help provide food, water, and emergency supplies to communities that have been hit especially hard by COVID, so we should also make it clear that any snark you may have perceived in this story was all in good fun.