.travel – Top Level Domain for travel and tourism

The .travel domain is a top-level domain name. As its name indicates, its use is strictly restricted to travel agencies, airlines, hotel chains, tourist clusters, as well as other tourism industry players.
Many tourist destinations and countries have implemented top-level domains of this kind with great success for their Tourism Promotion Office (OPT) or official tourism promotion brands.

A website with a .travel second level domain identifies its registrant as a bona fide tourism or travel industry business.
This type of domain grants greater flexibility when deciding upon a name for a site and makes simplifies the process of developing strategic marketing initiatives or launching new tourism-related products and services.
Furthermore, it’s a great way of increasing brand awareness, especially to provide more obscure brands more recognition.

Since some time ago the use of.travel domains has been promoted on a global scale in order to make identifying tourism businesses easier.
The travel and tourism sector is one of the main proponents fueling the growth of the global economy. As a result, the accelerated pace at which the Internet has grown and the high volume of information readily available demanded the creation of a specialized top-level domain name.
The English word travel is widely recognized and used in non-English-speaking countries.
Consequently, a website with a .travel suffix is universally acknowledged as a company directly linked to the industry.

Analytical empirical research has demonstrated that a .travel domain is more easily identifiable in international markets than .com, .co.uk or.fr domains.
We are not suggesting companies cease to use their existing domain name, but should consider purchasing a .travel domain to increase their visibility on a global scale.
The advantages of having a .travel are varied. The three main reasons are below:

• Categorizing your domain in a precise manner. A .travel domain is a simple and economical marketing tool for companies and tourism organizations.
• A .travel domain is the most reliable source for navigating through travel and tourism-related information.
• Web platforms with a .travel domain obtain significantly better results in search engines. They are assigned greater relevancy in comparison to .com sites, as these are directly linked to the travel industry. Some examples of top ranking sites (in terms of SEO) include Egypt.travel, Utah.travel and Colombia.travel.

Some tips to take into account when registering a .travel domain:

• They are exclusively reserved for entities who are affiliated with the tourism industry.
• They are a second level domain name.
• .travel domains must point to a website related directly with the domain name, or be redirected to a domain with tourism-specific content, as well as in its domain name.
• Number of permitted characters: 3 to 63 (extension excluded).

Steps for buying a .travel domain

1. Verification. First verify if the domain name is available.
2. Authentication. In order to proceed, one must provide the organization granting the domain name with the necessary credentials to prove one is a member of the travel industry. If approved, the registrar will proceed to provide the registrant with a UIN (Unique Identifying Number) code.
3. Purchase. One may proceed to register the selected .travel domain and choose for how many years they wish to do so.
4. Activate. Now one may migrate their website to the new domain and ask to be included in the .travel directory (optional).

If you wish to register a .travel domain, we recommend EnCirca or Gandi.