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.