7.3.08 Travel Trade “.travel Reaching out to Travel Agents”

.travel Reaching out to Travel Agents
by Editor Nick Verrastro
The .travel Registry’s new management is now reviving the domain name with revised, content-relevant requirements and a promotional campaign to the trade.
“We now have moved away from focusing on who owns a name to how it is used, which is more important and relevant,” said Cespedes. “The idea of a top level domain that is authentic means that if you are searching for something, you find what you are looking for.”
The .travel Registry, Cespedes added, is more interested in .travel sites having relevant content - for example, a skicolorado.travel site cannot have kayaking in New York content.
“As long as you are legitimately in the travel business and within 60 days you have content up relevant to the domain name,” a company that has been authenticated as being in travel will be awarded with a .travel name, noted Cespedes.
Better Search Engine Results
“We are seeing a very nice side benefit of .travel name. Because they are so relevant, the search engines index them extremely well,” which means consumers will find a travel agency’s .travel Web site, said Cespedes.
“All search engines want results to be useful; they want people to find what they are looking for. This has been a nice benefit to the .travel name because everyone knows you are not selling medical supplies if you are using a .travel domain name.”
Major travel brands and travel marketing organizations use their .travel names to get better results from the search engines, according to Cespedes, noting there are 20 billion to 30 billion travel searches a year.
Search engines look at URLs, among other attributes of a site, and this is where a travel company can leverage the tokenized word “.travel.”
The engines also read the site for relevant content, another requirement for the .travel name.
“Search engine optimization comes down to the architecture, the right domain name, back links and content - whether the site is relevant to what you are looking for, and with .travel, by definition the content and architecture are right and back links take care of themselves,” said Cespedes.
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The Internet top-level domain, .travel, gives travel and tourism businesses and organizations the opportunity to register their name in the segment of the Internet designated for the travel industry. Registering www.company.travel instead of www.company.com shows the world that you are a recognized part of the travel community.
Unlike “.com”, “.org”, “.co.uk” or the other top-level domains available on the Internet today, .travel is an industry-exclusive top-level domain. All .travel domain name holders go through an eligibility review process to get a .travel name, insuring that all .travel web sites are held by legitimate travel organizations.
In addition:
.travel's unique search engine www.search.travel enables targeted searches highlighting verified travel providers, establishing a stronger, more reliable connection between our industry and customers.
www.search.travel is built with a destination and travel category architecture giving consumers focused destination and travel information- true one-to-one marketing.
Already, thousands of companies are expanding into the industry’s own Internet segment by registering their .travel domain name, and going through the .travel authentication process to receive the travel and tourism industry’s, ‘travel authenticated’ global mark.
Register your company name today to be an integral part of the dedicated Internet space for Travel and Tourism.