Booking.yeah!
Hotel booking company Booking.com has won exclusive rights to run the .hotels top level domain name for $2.2 million.
The company was the only applicant for the .hotels domain name. However, .hotels and .hoteis were one of two sets of domains to be considered “too similar” in ICANN’s first pass of string similarity. (Other domain names were trapped through individual string similarity objections.)
Therefore, there was a public auction today between Booking.com and Despegar Online SRL, applicant for .Hoteis.
The auction result means only .hotels will exist. .Hoteis, Portuguese for hotels, will be relegated to the trash bin.
.Hotel (singular) was a more popular extension with seven applicants. HOTEL Top-Level Domain s.a.r.l won a Community Priority Evaluation for that domain name.
Booking.com is perhaps best known in the domain name industry for promoting the non-existent domain name Booking.yeah.
fizz says
It’s going to be mighty interesting to see how this plays out with The Priceline Group’s (booking.com, kayak.com, rentalcars.com) ownership of .hotels for $2.2M going directly up against Expedia Inc’s (Travelocity, Orbitz, CarRentals.com, wotif.com, HomeAway etc) ownership of the hotels.com/hotel.com brand.
Domainer Extraordinaire says
Your title is misleading but consistent with your other titles like this. It appears they bought one domain name, something.hotels for 2.2 million.
Andrew Allemann says
Well, since .Hotels doesn’t exist yet, that wouldn’t make much sense. What if I said .hotels top level domain name?
Domainer Extraordinaire says
.hotels is not a domain name it’s an infinite number of domain names. You don’t call .com a domain name.
Andrew Allemann says
I understand why you think the headline should be worded differently.
Technically speaking though, it’s a domain name. It’s a Top Level domain name, whereas what we’re used to talking about is a Second Level domain name.
theweedbudz says
Makes perfect sense Andrew! Thanks for sharing!
Marlo says
.WasteOfMoney
Tom Barrett says
Has Booking.com announced that they will not be activating both TLDs? Or are you speculating?
Andrew Allemann says
Tom, they only get to use the one they applied for. The two domains were deemed too similar (visually) by ICANN.
Patrick says
Book me some Booking.Hotels
Name Options says
Surprised that Expedia didn’t apply for the TLD and Booking was the only applicant. Think they will do very well with the extension in promoting their brand.
Andrew Allemann says
Technically, they have to offer the domain name to any registrant. But they can always put a $30k price tag on each registration to discourage them.
theweedbudz says
Is there a maximum they can put for a price tag or could they say anything with .hotels is $75k, $100k etc? Obviously they want to still generate revenue with it so wouldn’t necessarily do that but they could? Correct?
James Norquay says
Good purchase though I would prefer to the .hotel, this seems like a good domain for country specific hotels.