Handsome Logic

The Travel Partnership Corporation’s .travel domains are waaaay up there on the list of useless sponsored top level domains (sTLD’s). But companies pay to register them for the same reason Verizon registered their .mobi’s: to keep others from getting them.

Unlike .mobi, however, .travel requires proof of trademark for domain registration through their primary registrar EnCirca. The cost for this consideration is a whopping registration fee of $99 per name.

For these, and plenty of other reasons, speculation in May was that .travel may soon go belly-up. The Florida Sun Sentinel reported:

In a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, theglobe.com said management does not think the company can fund its operations beyond this month unless it receives more money. As of May 4, the company had a cash balance of $480,000. Last quarter it reported a net loss of $2.8 million on revenues of $431,742 .

Bankruptcy looming, a client of mine who holds a small .travel portfolio reads the following release this morning:

1. Those travel organizations that have been ‘sitting on-the-fence’ with the assumption that a desired domain name is likely ‘safe’ due to the strict guidelines originally set by .travel, now face a greater risk of someone else registering that domain name.

• To help protect your company, brand, service, or product name on the Internet, you should strongly consider moving forward with your .travel authentication process immediately in order to register the names before December 21st.

2. Travel organizations who have been unable to register a desired domain name, due to the strict .travel policies, will now have the opportunity to register those names (if available) starting December 21st.

• This means that those travel organizations that have not secured their .travel domain name(s) should do so immediately ahead of the December 21st deadline

The release concludes with this statement:

**Special Note: This alert is only intended to make the companies or organizations aware of the potential impact of new .travel policies that create a situation where an organization that doesn’t register a domain name may find that someone else registers it.

Translation: Because so few people have bought into the value we’ve (barely) tried to create for this sTLD, we’re dropping our stringent trademark protection policies. Hopefully the thought of someone else registering your dead-weight domain before you do will scare your cash right out of your wallet. Sorry, but we’ve got mortgages to pay.

The irony is that the first bullet point on the Why Register? page of travel.travel is:

Since .travel domain names are authenticated, they provide an enhanced level of trust for the consumer. The customer knows that your company has been validated as a legitimate supplier in the travel and tourism industry.

Hey, one less reason to register!

The only people to benefit from the existence of this sTLD are Travel.com and domain owners whose domains end in “travel.com”. Imagine being on the phone trying to tell your elderly parents to check out your website, XYZ.travel. Know where they’re going? Yup, XYZ.travel.com or XYZtravel.com.

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid kids, especially at $99/cup.