Dot Com vs Dot Travel

The Travel Partnership Corporation is a Washington DC based non-profit corporation formed to promote the addition to the Internet of a new sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) to be known as .travel; and to recommend policies and practices concerning the eligibility to register domain names in the .travel sTLD. Recently, TTPC proudly announced the addition of two new sectors (travel insurance and travel training) to the list of travel industry entities entitled to have the dot travel domain name, bringing the total number of sectors on the roster (hotels included) to an impressive twenty.

TTPC’s board and management have stellar credentials and hail from a variety of travel related industries across the globe. Its website has a number of laudable goals including the establishment and enforcement of standards developed by its consitituents. Their home page goes on to note that “Tourism’s economic impact is four times as large as global steel exports, 50% larger than the export of clothes and textiles, and equal to the global export of automobiles. Underscoring these statistics, travel and tourism accounts for 5% of total global economic output, 10% of international trade and leads all online transactions at 28% of the total.” All very true but neither steel exporters nor clothes and auto manufacturers have their own sTLD. And it has done nothing to impede their growth – nor is it likely to.
TTPC’s intentions are noble but it is a flawed idea that likely will do nothing for any of its constituents whose considerable resources could be better spent elsewhere.

Published by

Vijay Dandapani

Co-founder and president of a New York based hotel company for 24 years. Grew the firm to five hotels in Manhattan and also developed a greenfield project at MacArthur airport, New York. Speaker at numerous prestigious forums including Economy Hotels World Asia, Lodging Conference, NYU, Columbia University Real Estate Roundtable, Baruch College's Zicklin School and ALIS. President and ceo of New York City Hotel Association since January 2017.