The *NEW* ".travel" top-level domain

[A-two]

Paolo,
The following position paper was written for another site, but I'm also posting here as well to raise awareness of the issues with as many vacation rental owners and owners of vacation rental listing sites as possible.

Joanna

_____________________________


As part of my ongoing series of lectures about choosing a domain name....(just kidding ...I did some digging on the new travel domain. First, and contrary to what I said in my previous post, the new domain name extension is ".travel", not ".aero" which was one of numerous prior failed applications. This one is now in the final stages of approval by ICANN, which basically means it's a done deal, and it's going to be run by a large US corporation, according to rules they set themselves, with millions of websites (if their marketing blurb is to be believed) and no effective oversight to hold them accountable to the public interest.

Supposed to be run by Talliance Corp, a US non-profit, http://www.ttpc.org/ , Talliance looks like a front that was set up for TheGlobe.com, a publicly traded company (OTCBB:TGLO). The two have been in bed together since the beginning of 2003, but kept it secret until 2 weeks ago (Nov 17th), when it was disclosed that TheGlobe.com would exercise its exclusive option to acquire Talliance and the ".travel" Registry once approval is finalized by ICANN. I mention it because it is very odd. TheGlobe.com has absolutely no experience in running a top-level domain, rather it's website sells phone services and anyway, none of the recently launched new TLDs have proved very successful, so one wonders why they would bother. (At this point, I appreciate you're wondering why you need to bother as well, but please bear with me.)

Looking closer, TheGlobe.com owns VoiceGlo, a voice-over IP company, which was founded by Michael S. Egan, who is listed by Forbes in the 400 richest Americans and also founded Alamo-Rent-a-Car. More significant, he is Chairman of Certified Vacations, a privately held wholesale Travel Company, founded about 25 years ago, that specializes in Designing, Marketing and Delivering Vacation Packages. There's also rumor of a cozy relationship with US Airline Delta. TheGlobe.com also owns SendTec, a leading provider of online and off-line results-based direct marketing services and it was involved in free website hosting, offering tens of thousands of free websites, about second in size only to Geocities. Statements by TheGlobe.com and by Talliance Corp on their websites indicate who is likely to get an invite to join their exclusive ".travel club":-

<quote>
"Open to all bona fide travel and tourism associations, TTPC is a consortium of travel industry bodies representing a broad cross-section of the industry. The actual size of the industry, from the perspective of directory subscribers and domain name holders, is estimated to be in excess of 1,000,000 travel providers, purveyors, and associated entities—a constituency comprised of travel agents, tour operators, airlines, hotels, car rental companies, cruise lines, bus companies, ferries, rail lines, theme parks, convention bureaus, and national tourism offices. "

"Unlike ".com", ".net", ".org", ".co.uk" or any of the other top-level domain names (known as "TLDs") available on the Internet today, ".travel" will represent a reliable space where everyone, the world over, will know that only established travel businesses are registered. This industry-sponsored, industry-related TLD ensures that all .travel web sites will only host bona fide travel-related businesses and organizations."
</quote>

Which kind of leaves the rest of us "unreliable" folks playing in our ".com" space over here <---------------------, while the 1,000,000+ "reliable" folks are in another segment of the internet over there ------------------------------->.

Anyway, expect to see a promo on a TV near you. A wild guess would be 6-9 months until launch, maybe Sept 2005, and I would reserve judgment on possible impact for 6 months after that. Of course there's no guarantee that ".travel" is going to work any better than other recent attempts at restricted domains, but given the huge amount of money being thrown at this one, it could affect all of us adversely over time, especially as there is not going to be a VRBO.travel, or Cyberrentals.travel either as things stand.

All the best,

Joanna

[paolo]

Thanks Joanna, very interesting.

Do you know how they propose to limit access to this new extension? Sector-specific extensions like .tv and .org are open to all, aren't they?

I'm not going to lose sleep over this. I think the search engines will always aim to deliver the most relevant results, and if we owners and the listing sites are excluded from this extension, they won't hold it against us. Am I right?

[A-two]

Q: Do you know how they propose to limit access to this new extension?

A: I'm not a party to negotiations on the minutae of the contract, but since control will pass to the private sector, they can more or less write their own rulebook after the event. If published press releases are anything to go by, and that's all I have right now, these clearly state access will be strictly limited to members of legitimate pre-existing travel industry bodies and organizations (or the like). I don't think Property Angels, Lay-My-Hat and Holiday-Rentals qualifies in that category, whatever the extension, do you?

With specific ref. to accomodations, the eligible group currently comprises hotels (such as the Hilton) and theme parks (such as Disney). That's it. Do they imagine all other types of accomodation are unworthy, disreputable and a con? Of course not, but nobody else cared enough to lobby for inclusion, so they were excluded. It's really that simple.

Q: Sector-specific extensions like .tv and .org are open to all, aren't they?

A: Yes, but .tv and .org are very different animals.

On the one hand, .tv is a country code (ccTLD) for Tuvalu (if memory serves), but masquerades as a generic (gTLD). Some third world governments with cute country codes sold out to the highest bidder when .com became scarce, for example Western Samoa, which they now say stands for "world site". GMAB. Ignore them.

On the other hand, .org is a true generic, originally set up originally for non-profits, but impossible to police, so rather than disenfranchise those who registered originally and are now operating as part of the legacy, they decided not to enforce that restriction going forward. The same happened to .net, which was originally intended for ISPs (internet service provider networks). However, whereas .net has moved on and shed its orginal mantle, I'm not sure the same can be said of .org. BTW, .net is up for grabs again as the contract with NetSol is about to expire, so it's future is a little wobbly right now.

.org is worth a special mention because unlike everything else, the Registry was wrested away from the corporate interests and taken over by PIR (Public Internet Registry) It is now the only true generic domain name that exists today which is run on a non-profit basis for the benefit of the people. PIR do listen and are willing to be held accountable, largely due to the tireless work of some heavy weight academics, such as Milton Meuller at Syracuse University.

Unfortunately, from a marketing standpoint, it's not a good idea to pick what is perceived as a non-profit base to launch a for-profit operation, which can only give the impression of false representation. However, I would love to change that perception and buy only .orgs.

Q: I'm not going to lose sleep over this. I think the search engines will always aim to deliver the most relevant results, and if we owners and the listing sites are excluded from this extension, they won't hold it against us. Am I right?

A: Good idea. I'm not an expert on SEO, and don't know how an extension is weighted in search results. My concern right is more for the marketing strategy, which attacks the .com using the fear factor, as if it, .net,.org, .co.uk etc. are not a safe option. It's using the moral argument that recently won re-election for GWB. In short, it works.

Anyway, I'm going to try and get in touch with a couple of people who know a lot more about this than me, and ask them to add their perspective.

All the best,
Joanna
E&OE

[paolo]

Thanks Joanna.

And I thought .tv was for the television industry!

In the UK, one of the five terrestrial broadcasters - Channel 5 - has a domain of five.tv. How cheeky!

[Darren]

.. interesting enough but how many of the .info .tv .biz domains have you seen with the search engine results?

They are giving .info domain names away for free now.

[A-two]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041203/175/f7u2v.html

They're now talking about releasing as early as Spring 2005. This article also mentions that B&Bs are now included.

Darren, your question is the one I want answered as well. Will search engines suddenly start to weight .travel domains above everything else for people that put "travel" into a keyword search? If not, then why would it effect our position in the results?

[Darren]

Joanna, I think it will be unlikely that search engines will increase the weight in the search engine results for travel sites using .travel - but who knows.

From past experiences I think the .travel domain will simply be a novelty just like .biz, .info etc.

A few years ago I heard a rumour about Google launching a travel search engine, but nothing has ever happened - recently Yahoo launched its vacation search using specific travel companies.

We will see

Darren

[A-two]

It seems like they are struggling with how to use domain name extensions like portals. Yahoo tries to create a travel portal, ICANN creates a .travel domain, same difference. I don't see how any of this can work for them. It's all about trying to control what information people can access. They would just love it if they could turn the clock back and only create sponsored domain extensions (topic specific). As it is, the winners in that department are governments like China, who have a gateway that stops everything they do not explicity approve. Don't expect any Chinese bookings on your vacation rental any time soon...

Joanna

[A-two]

OK, as predicted, ICANN has now entered into contract with Talliance for .travel.

Regarding eligibility, vacation rental homes are still on the wrong side of the door. B&Bs have been added, amounting now 19 business categories, rather than the previous 18. If you don't fit into any of those, you can apply to be authenticated by Dun and Bradstreet, (those well know experts on vacation rentals by owner..

Here's the kicker. Those eligible to register a .travel domain, will be given the option at the time of registration to be included in a new ".travel directory" . This will be provided as part of Registry services at no extra cost and will allow users to search only that database, excluding all other domain name extensions.

We have six months to figure out how to join them or beat them. You heard it here first.

Joanna
www.propertyangels.com