Dot Travel TLD

Valuable .travel domain names in hands of non travel companies

[Optimus]

Has anyone else picked up discrepancies in the use of the dot travel domains? Our company was recently approached by a USA company offering to rent us a highly sought after URL at $1000 per month. A little investigation showed that the registrar was not one of the authorized .travel registrars, and the company which owns the domain name appears to be little more than a front for this registrar. The registrar’site is "under construction" and currently operates as a scraper.

I contacted Tralliance (who oversee the dot travel registry) and they are now "investigating" this, but I am not satisfied from their response that they regard this seriously enough. It was a major thing for travel companies to go through the authentication process with an accredited organization, and now it seems that some unscrupulous people have found a loophole in the system and obtained highly valuable URL's which were denied to legitimate travel companies during the authentication period.

Is this the start of the rot of the dot travel TLD's?

[Webwork]

I recall recently reading "news" that the .travel TLD was facing possible extinction due to expenses of operation exceeding revenues.

Maybe that would make the matter moot? Maybe the offer to sell is an act of desperation?

[edited by: Webwork at 3:27 pm (utc) on May 29, 2007]

[Webwork]

You may be a feel for the future of the .travel TLD by taking a look at the SEC filings of the parent company:

[edgar.sec.gov...]

[callivert]

wow, their finances have taken a turn for the worse just in the past year! I'm no accountant, but it looks like they're a few million in the red, and trending downwards.

[travelin cat]

This is not surprising as they have been all over us to register our domain as ourdomain.travel

We can't see the value of registering it... not even to protect our name.

Outside of this and other similar forums, who would even know about this tld?

[LifeinAsia]

It generated a bit of buzz in the begining in the travel industry, but quickly became a big yawn. When it was actually approved, I can't even remember that it even got a mention in any of the trade newsletters I read.