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.travel: A New Domain For The Global Tourism Industry
Jyoti Koul - New Delhi
Thanks to technology, the world has become a global village.
The current trends in travel and tourism point to the fact that about 51 per
cent of all travellers use the Internet for bookings that makes it imperative
for a huge number of stakeholders in the travel and tourism industry to hook
on to the internet. Therefore realising the need to provide a common domain
for the travel industry, Tralliance Corporation has begun operating the dot
travel (domain). The company intends to actively work with all sectors of the
travel industry to build the .travel registry to meet varied internet needs
of today's travel community.
Currently, of the 40,000 registered domains in the travel industry, only 8,000
websites are active. "An estimated one million travel and tourism entities
worldwide exist today which translates into an internet adoption rate of less
than 0.5 per cent by travel companies. .travel plans to reinforce its identity
on the Internet, add additional distribution channels and provide direct access
to consumers," disclosed Ron Andruff, President and CEO, Tralliance Corporation,
in an exclusive to Express Travel & Tourism.
As per the findings of the company, online travel purchases in 2005 are projected
to reach US$ 150 billion making it the largest sector of commerce conducted
on the Internet. While indicating a great opportunity, the revenues are bound
to increase five-fold due with .travel as the domain and its directory will
enable all travel and tourism entities to gain their fair share of online sales.
While explaining features of the domain, Andruff said ".travel enables
the trade to confidently conduct business with other .travel domain name holders.
Besides that .travel directory will provide a precise catalog of virtually every
product or service offered by .travel registrants to a degree of detail that
has never before been available.” .travel worldwide board director Ashwini
Kakkar said he foresaw exponential growth in online travel space as he expected
a lot of currently offline travel agents to take advantage of the growth opportunity
that the internet presented. “In fact TAAI is currently in dialogue with
.travel to find a space on its website. Many TAAI members are also expected
to register,” Kakkar revealed.
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