The Travel Partnership Corporation (TTPC), the company that oversees the .travel top level domain registration process, has approved some very important policy changes to take effect December 21, 2007 that may affect the companies and organizations of .travel names. According to TTPC, these changes are being made to improve and speed up the registration process for use of .travel Internet addresses. These changes are posted for public notice and review at: http://www.ttpc.travel/.

While not yet in effect TTPC wants to alert to how these policies may affect the companies or organizations.

"Alerting you now gives you an extra week or so to give you the opportunity to make decisions about .travel ahead of changes in policy," said TTPC.

As of December 21, 2007 companies that have been authenticated as eligible travel businesses or organizations will be allowed to register any available .travel domain name directly through .travel approved domain registrars (trademark laws apply)

Two specific issues emerge as a result of this change that may influence your decision to register .travel addresses for your organization:

1. Those travel organizations that have been ‘sitting on-the-fence’ with the assumption that a desired domain name is likely ‘safe’ due to the strict guidelines originally set by .travel, now face a greater risk of someone else registering that domain name.

• To help protect your company, brand, service, or product name on the Internet, you should strongly consider moving forward with your .travel authentication process immediately in order to register the names before December 21st.

2. Travel organizations who have been unable to register a desired domain name, due to the strict .travel policies, will now have the opportunity to register those names (if available) starting December 21st.

• This means that those travel organizations that have not secured their .travel domain name(s) should do so immediately ahead of the December 21st deadline.
• To access the .travel application and authentication form go to: http://www.authentication.travel/index.jsp?ap=trap.

3. There are two important places you can visit now to determine what .travel domain names you might be interested in are still available.

• http://www.whois.travel/ - go here to enter any domain names you are interested in. This site will tell you if a name is available and if not, who has registered it.
• http://www.authentication.travel/reserved.jsp - this is an important site to be aware of because it shows ‘Place Names and Industry Terms’ that are currently reserved and not available for registration. This is important because if you type in a name that is on this list in the Whois link above it may show the name you type in as not registered giving you the impression that it is available, which is not the case because it is a reserved name. This, however, will change on December 21 when the new policy will result in most of these names being released for general registration.

 

**Special Note: This alert is only intended to make the companies or organizations aware of the potential impact of new .travel policies that create a situation where an organization that doesn’t register a domain name may find that someone else registers it.