Will .Travel Registry Fail?
Monday, May 21st, 2007
First RegisterFly died. Will the .Travel registry fail next?
A fiasco ensued when domain registrar RegisterFly died. ICANN is learning its lesson. But now an entire domain registry is on the verge of death. The good news is it’s only the .travel registry, which no one really cares about anyway.
Noted .travel critic Edward Hasbrouck, who has complained about the way the .travel domain was awarded and structured, writes about registry Tralliance’s parent company, TheGlobe.com, Inc., and its cash crunch.
TheGlobe.com has less than a half million dollars left and will run out of money within a month if it doesn’t receive additional investment. The company’s stock once traded as high as $97 but now changes hands over-the-counter for about three cents (TGLO.ob).
.Travel probably isn’t helping TheGlobe.com’s finances. Industry-specific and topic-specific domain names with registration restrictions haven’t performed well. Just look at .pro. Despite a loophole that lets anyone register a .pro domain (instead of just accredited professionals), there have only been a handful of notable .pro domain sales and very few companies actually use the domain.
Whether or not ICANN will step in to save .travel before it’s too late remains to be seen.
Further Reading:
[...] .Travel condenados a morir? Posted by: jpsueiro in Legales, Dominios .Travel Si bien no estaba al tanto del tema, me sorprende leer un par de artículos Aquí y Aquí en donde se expone el problema financiero que está atravesando TheGlobe.com a través de su división Tralliance, responsable de la gestión de los dominios [...]
Hi,
I hope Juan doesn’t mind but I put his posting thru FreeTranslation.com for those who do not speak Spanish.
It’s actually not all that much of an improvement but here goes:
“Travel condemned to die? Posted by: jpsueiro in Legal, Domains.Travel though was not al so much of the theme, surprises me to read a pair of articles Here and Here where the financial problem is exposed that is crossing Theglobe.com through its division Tralliance, responsible for the management of the domains.”
Footnote: FreeTranslation changed “Dominios” to Control but I know it should be “Domains”
so I made the adjustment.
Patrick
Tried hard to register some good .travel domains in my space but I got bad feelings time and time again. Just bad business on several levels.
They had their marketing push a few months ago. If they still need money then it just is not going to get off the ground, especially if the whole system is flawed.
Interesting. How will ICANN handle it?
I know of .travel and will say with confidence that it’s a big undertaking to get all of the travel industry to embrace the .travel TLD but if they can get expenses down and find advertising they have a good shot.God knows the travel industry needs organization.
[...] .travel registry almost went bankrupt last year before it was bailed out by majority shareholder Michael Egan. But then Egan was involved [...]
I own 2 .Travel websites. Since it’s inception, this company (Trailliance or wooever is bailing them out) has been unprofessional. Their “Directory” looks like it was put together by a 4th grader with half a brain. If they are using any sort of algorithms to order search words/phrases, then why when you type in “caribbean cruise” do you end up with 15-20 Royal Caribbean entries that are all identical!
Anyway, I can handle incompetence but what disturbs me the most is the outright lies from Heidi asst. to the CEO. At this point after receiving certain assurances from Heidi regarding the upcoming quality improvment of the directory (April 2009), noone at any of the companies phones answers them. I have sent 3 e-mails in the past week to Victoria Ancell with absolutely no response. I guess if I were representing such a pathetic company, I’d also be too embarassed to show my face.