Meet the .Travel Extension

Monte: Hello everyone. Welcome to Domain Masters. I'm Monte Cahn, your host. Thanks for joining me tonight. We have a pretty cool show tonight. I thought I would have two of the brand new extensions that have been recently approved - .jobs and .travel, but the .jobs guys had a conflict at the last minute. So, we will be talking to Ron Andruf, who is the present CEO of Truliance Corporation. He's been through a hell of a time getting the .travel extension approved and finally just received approval; and we're going to talk to him about the whole process, what he went through, who's going to be qualified to register .travel names, the unique space that they have created for content where everyone who dials in a .travel name will know exactly what they're getting when they get there. Unlike any of the other extensions, as you know, you can go to a .com, .net, .org, even some of the other extensions, and not exactly know what you're going to get. With .travel, it's going to be totally travel related and they are going to restrict that to that effect. And, we're going to learn everything there is to learn about that; and then we're going to hook up with Ron Jackson and get a kind of industry pulse on what has been going on the last couple weeks. There've been some significant sales and, of course, we have two major meetings coming up regarding our industry. One, Traffic West in Las Vegas and also the Domain Roundtable in Seattle. There are some exciting things going on in the industry. So hang with me for a couple of minutes. We're going to do a commercial and we'll be right back with Ron Andruf.

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello, welcome back to the show. I'm Monte Cahn, your host. I want to do a little intro of my first guest, Ron Andruf, who happened to be a former champion professional athlete as well. He's been in the international marketing arena for about 25 years; and as CEO of Truliance Corporation, he's had a mission to enhance the internet commerce for travel and tourism industry. Truliance is combining an internet travel directory with the top level domain name, .travel. As I mentioned before, unlike .com, .org, or any other TLDs, with .travel, which will be exclusive top-level domaining for the travel and tourism industry, there will be a clear understanding of what you'll get when you get there regarding the travel only space and its content. Today, Ron is going to give us a complete update on the whole application process, the approval process, and then a lot of the important information of what people need to know about registering .travel names, who's going to be allowed to do it, and when we expect to go live. Ron, welcome to the show. I appreciate your time.

Ron A.: It's nice to be here, Monte; and thank you for the invitation.

Monte: Now, I'm not familiar with what championship athlete or what sports you used to play. What were you?

Ron A.: Back in the heyday when Montreal Canadians used to win Stanley Cups and one year after the other, I managed to find myself on that dynasty team. So, back in the 70's it was a very exciting time for the National Hockey League. Unfortunately, we don't have one today; but back then, I turned pro with Montreal just after they won the first championship and I was there for three more.

Monte: Wow, what position did you play?

Ron A.: I was a center man.

Monte: Good, good. Well, that's a unique position to be in and then coming out of a professional hockey career and then going into business, it seems you've had a lot of experience in the marketing arena and put your whole heart and soul behind this .travel extension. Give us a little background on how all that started.

Ron A.: Well, my partner and I had been entrepreneurs a long time; and what happens is, when a project comes across our table that really grabs our attention, we get very much involved in it. We entered the travel arena back in about '96, '97; and, at that time, it came about as a result of my travel agent telling me they didn't have all the data in one place when it comes to make a booking. And that sounded awfully strange to me; but we drove down, did the research, and sure enough he was right. So, we created a company called Fare One, which provided a blended screen of consolidated fares as well as published fares; which basically put everything on the desk top for the travel agent and enabled them to compete with the travelocities of the world.

Monte: How long ago was this?

Ron A.: That was back in ah, we started that in about '98 and by 2000 or so we had gained enough traction that about 1,000 agents signed up in the first 100 days and it was quite a success. There was a U.K. company that had a B to C play and we were B to B, and we were both using the back end and there was a lot of synergy between the two. So, we ultimately brought the two companies together and took it public on the London Stock Exchange under World Travel Holdings back in 2000. So, after that, we had stepped down, we had completed our agreements with the company to lead it forward and they put professional managers in place. My partner and I started looking at the core of the internet and particularly the travel space. It occurred to us that, as the net continues to grow in such an extraordinary fashion, that if you had a directory that would enable all travel and tourism entities to be found, we would be creating something of some value. That, in fact, led us to Ican; and that year, of course, the .travel bid had been rejected, the one put forward by Iata. The reason for that was lack of representativeness with the industry. So, we researched the bid and went through it in fine detail and, again, did the kind of research as we would on any other project. About three months later, we felt that we had a position paper that made sense and the bottom line on that was that we wanted to create a grass roots program that any travel trade association could participate in and get real benefit out of.

Monte: So, when you were getting the grass root support, did you go to travel agents, the airlines, the cruise lines. Did you get total support and endorsement from the entire industry?

Ron A.: Exactly. That's exactly what we did. We were running on two parallel tracks. The one track of course was pursuing the Ican process and being at all the meetings and just participating in the Ican process as a whole, but also being very focused on moving the idea of top level domains, and particularly sponsored top level domains forward. So that was one activity. Parallel to that, we were going around to the major travel trade associations, World Travel and Tourism Counsel, Pacific Asia Travel Association, American Society of Travel Agents, International Counsel of Cruise Lines, International Association of Convention and Business Bureaus, and such associations, really working at an apex level if you will, and introducing the idea of a directory and then the value of it with the .travel domain. So, as we continued that process, what happened clearly was that there was just a…of course 9/11 came along and SARS came along and there were a lot of situations like that…crises that woke the world up to the importance of travel, both from an economic generator as well as just the personal issues we all have in terms of taking vacations. So, those factors all sort of came together and there was a confluence of activity that happened; and the associations were clearly ready for this. So, it wasn't a really difficult sell. It was more really explaining, “Here's an opportunity that we, as an industry, can come together, create an infrastructure that would allow everyone of the members of the industry to take the body blows of these crises, whether it's a bomb going off in Bali or a tsunami hitting in the Indian Ocean, and allow the rest of the industry that is still standing after these crises to be able to continue to move forward and maintain their business without having everything come to a grinding halt.

Monte: Right, right. So, now Ican rejected the first bid for this, because I thought this process with you went for a couple years. Did they also reject one of your bids as well when you took it over?

Ron A.: No, in fact you're right about it taking several years; but there were no rejections in there. Quite to the contrary, the difficulty was getting Ican to move forward with the idea of moving on a limited number of sponsored top level domains as an interim step to a much larger rollout of domains, one that the community had no consensus on. So, the difficult process for us was that, as we got to a point where an RFP had been prepared, had been vented by the community, had been pretty well ready to go, and all it required was a board approval, the whole thing went sideways with one of the board members saying, “No, no, I didn't understand this was going to be a limited number of applicants. In fact, I thought it was going to be a much broader group.” Then, that basically killed that RFP. Also, we had the same issue in the sense of having it being derailed when the idea of evolutionary form came about with Ican. While it was important and necessary, it was very frustrating that we had covered a lot of ground with a large number of the constituents within the Ican community only to have the thing be parked for the better part of 18 to 24 months while we went through evolutionary form. So, we found ourselves in a kind of difficult position a couple of times; but, having said that, it gave us more time to build a larger consensus and larger demand, if you will, for the .travel initiative within the industry. So, we continued, as I said, to pursue these parallel paths and finally we got the RFP out and were able to submit our application and scored very high marks across the board. So, we were very pleased with that and pleased that the board unanimously approved .travel. So, we're finally at a point we're moving out of policy and into process.

Monte: Great, great. Well, heck you certainly worked your tail off for the approval; and I know it's been a couple years. Welcome to the politics of Ican and the bureaucracy, that's for sure. So, I hope it definitely pays off for you and I know that the travel industry being behind it will definitely support it as well. So, that gets me into a couple other questions. So, your infrastructure in terms of the registry standpoint, are you partnering with one of the existing registries to provide this service or are you doing it on your own? Are you going to be using affiliates, or New Level Technology, or this something you're going to support yourself?

Ron A.: No, you've named it right. In fact, New Level will be providing the back end for the .travel registry. So that the terms that we are using are the registry is the Truliance Corporation, the registry operator will then be New Level.

Monte: Okay, good. So, it will be an EPP interface and be able to do that. So, let's roll on to what the restrictions are. How does one…what's the authentication process to be able to register a .travel domain name?

Ron A.: Well, one of the most important things…I should back up and say that we take a long-term view, we understand that .travel will be at the core of the internet long after I'm gone, long after my children are gone, and my children's children are gone. We don't anticipate this architecture will change in any major way. Therefore, taking that perspective, we feel that we have a responsibility to really develop well-defined policies that will eliminate some of the ills that kept growing up with the net. That begins with the authentication process. Because we are a sponsored top-level domain and the first requirement of sponsored top-level domains is that they are in fact…you can put a parameter around it and define it very clearly what that community is. So, therefore having that as our first line of …how would I say it…that's the base line for us, then we say okay, then if we now know we can define the community, let's make sure that we can define policies that will be ones that will be inclusive of all of the industry but exclusive of anyone who is not in the industry. This will do a number of things. It will provide us with an absolutely pristine “who is” database, it will remove the issues of speculation in names, cyber squatting in names, and also provide a sound basis where we don't have to have defensive registrations. These are all the kinds of issues that have come up in time with the net. While there are a number of people who work with the main names and they've made a very good business with it in the generic space, we have no complaint against that. But, in the sponsored space, we do. So, the way the authentication will work is that, any member of any travel trade association will be able to go through an authentication process by clicking on the authentication icon within the .travel space. What happens then is that they will fill out about 18 fields, and those fields are all that you would have in a “who is,” basically contact information, the contact individuals, and so forth. Then, there will be space for the entity to note their corporate name, their doing business as names, their trademarks, service marks, any names that they have effectively a legal right to. In that way, they will define very clearly who they are and what names they're looking to have. When they have completed that form, they will hit the submit button and, in fact, it will go to their association. If they a member of several associations, they'll select which one they would like to have authenticated. Then, what will happen is a human being will check that data against the data that they have in their own database for that member of their association. In that way, if there is any discrepancy, they will be in touch with the registrant, clarify if they moved to another street, or changed their phone number, so that in fact we now have the correct data. At that point, they will be given a UIN (unique identifying number) and that UIN will then be the number they will enter on the registrar's page on page 2, which will then subsequently bring up a list of potential names that they can select. So, it is based on the authentification page that the selection of names will be generated from.

Monte: Okay, so, Before we move into the next part of that question, as you know the New.net folks have been offering a .travel extension for quite some time using their downloadable browser feed, their toolbar feed that runs in the background that recognizes an ISP and then allows that .travel extension to exist. There are some questions on the form and in the chat room what is the precedent on that, what is going to happen to all those .travel names that have been registered. Obviously, these take priority over everything; but, what is your official word on how all that is going to work?

Ron A.: Well, New.net really stepped in to fill a void in the marketplace back in 2000 when Ican decided to do a test bid of 7, to only come up with 7 top-level domains. I think they were trying to demonstrate their commercial applications and things that could be done. But, to be clear, any names that are registered there are really fourth-level names or third-level names, they are certainly not top-level domains because they are basically an appendage to New.net/ something else. So, what they've been selling basically are names that were not resolvable in the A route. What will happen now is that, anyone who took one of those names and is a bona fide member of the travel and tourism industry and would like to have a .travel domain name that is resolvable globally in the A route, they are all welcome to go through the authentification process. If they are not a member of an association for any reason, they can choose to go through the non-affiliated route, which effectively means that Dun & Bradstreet would do a public records check on them to give them the ability to have a .travel domain name. So, again, the space is open to all travel and tourism entities, but not open to speculators on names.

Monte: Okay. I just wanted to clarify this just so everybody knows. So, if someone is a travel association member in some way and has official documentation and credentials and they have a .travel New.net extension, will they be getting then first dibs on the name they already have in some way?

Ron A.: First come, first served. So, that policy will be observed also in the .travel space. But, having said that, anyone who is very interested in having a .travel domain name should be watching closely through their association or Truliance web site to be abreast of the preauthentification period we'll be entering shortly. The preauthentication period and preregistration period is really designed to allow the associations to do something they have never done before, and that is the authentication process and work through all of the detail of it. So, what I'm getting at is that, if someone were to go and get preauthenticated and get their names preregistered earlier than later, chances are they would be able to get the names they are looking for. There will always be conflicts of names; I don't think that that's something that anyone will be able to resolve because you always often have a Galaxy Travel or Victoria Hotel. Those names are kind of universal names; but having said that, they will have the ability to have Victoria-Melbourne.travel, Victoria-Canada.travel, Victoria-…whatever. So, everyone has the ability to get a name; but, again, it is always based upon the legal claims they have to those names.

Monte: So, if you run [inaudible] will your browser then recognize when you've registered a real .travel name the fact that you're supposed to go to the real .travel location versus the one that New.net has implanted in your computer? What's the policy or the procedure of clearing that out?

Ron A.: I would say that we don't have a policy to do that. If someone puts in a .travel domain name today, it would go to the A route. Well, let me put it more simply this way. Once Ican has turned it on, it will go to the A route if it's a .travel domain name. If it is an applicant, it will drive it back to the New.net folks. Then we'll have to take appropriate action to clarify that.

Monte: Okay. So the key here is that, because it's a TLD it will be in the A zone and will take precedence and then if people are not going where they are supposed to based on the approval of the .travel names, you guys will have measures in place to deal with that accordingly based off the Ican policy and what's going to be happening with New.net?

Ron A.: That is correct.

Monte: Okay. So that should clear the questions that are coming up. And then, those that obviously aren't related to the travel industry that have these domain names, they're going to be SOL.

Ron A.: It's one of those unfortunately circumstances. The bottom line is that we have to work within a world that makes sense vis-à-vis the internet and the global community. We take full responsibility for having responsibility for a global good; and, therefore, our job is to make sure that we deal with everyone in the most appropriate manner possible. As I said before, the idea here is to be inclusive of the industry and exclusive of those that are not in the industry ;because what we are trying to create is a directory that serves all, and this directory will be something that will be much more efficient for consumers and the trade in terms of finding more information.

Monte: Right, right. Okay, good. Alright, so let's move on off of the conflict between the current application fake .travel extensions and the real ones. This authentication process sounds like it is going to work well. Sounds that we, as registrars, will have to have the procedures in place to throw that up just like we do to validate some of these .US extensions and so on. It will just be, I assume, a template we all have to work with and implement into our registrars, correct?

Ron A.: Yes, that is more or less correct. And I would just add that rather than drilling down too deeply on that today, because these are still things that are in development, if there is an interest on it from a registrar's point of view, they can send an email to HYPERLINK "mailto:registrar-relations@Truliance.info" registrar-relations@Truliance.info and bring their questions and thoughts forward and we would be happy to respond.

Monte: Alright, and then, so….

Ron A.: …another comment to that, and that is that we are not looking for any registrars that have reseller networks. What we want and it is one of the provisions of the agreement is that they must be customer facing. So, this is not something to be distributed through a reseller network but, rather, to be going directly to the customers.

Monte: So like, Moniker, who deals directly with customers, would be entitled to register a domain name, a two-cow would not.

Ron A.: That's the criteria, that is correct.

Monte: So, it's going to be registrar restricted based off whether there is a reseller or if it is like a company that offers reseller program and they just don't allow that to be sold through the reseller network. Is that correct?

Ron A.: That's right.

Monte: So, you could have a reseller network, just not allow the .travel to be resaleable through that resaleable network and still offer it directly for customer use?

Ron A.: As I understand the policy being developed, that is correct.

Monte: Okay, great. Then, now when it gets to Google lookups and how searching for .travel information resides, you know Google or any other search engine, explain how that process is going to work when you have .travel domain names.

Ron A.: Well, in fact, Google spiders the internet; so if anyone has a .travel, .biz, .info, .com, they'll still be found. I don't think that there are any filters within the Goggle system or Yahoo system at all that would exclude bringing back more than 3-letter domain names in terms of .com being 3 letters and .travel being 6. So, first of all, anyone who has a name in .travel will be found; which, by the way, if you have a New.net name, you are not found in a Google search simply because they would have to go down too deep to find it in that sense. I'm oversimplifying it, but I'm just making a point. Now what the directory is going to be about is much considerably different from what is out there in terms of search today. Google, Yahoo, or whoever they might be, are basically doing free-text searches. A free-text search is quite clear if you put five terms into your query box, it will go out and it will spider the web and match those five terms and bring back anything that matches that. And you might have two or three terms that might be in the same statement and you might get close to your search. On the other hand, most often what happens is we end up having to narrow our search a little tighter to get a little closer; but, at the end of the day, if a search engine brings me back 1.9 million 252 thousand responses in 3 seconds, I really don't care. What I do care about is that exactly what I'm looking for is brought to me. So, the idea of the directory here that we are developing is what is called a controlled vocabulary directory. That means that we have established a taxonomy, we've built a taxonomy as [inaudible] scientists over the last several years that incorporates all travel and tourism terms. So, that means that every .travel registrant, once they have gotten their .travel domain name, will go into the directory and they will then check all the boxes that have relevance to what they have to offer. So, if they happen to be a 5-star hotel that has a golf course, a spa, certified babysitters, and it's on the beach in Puerto Rico, if that were what they were offering was, they would check those boxes. So, what happens then is when someone is coming in to do a search and they type in I'm looking for a 5-star hotel with a spa and a golf course and a certified babysitter to take care of our kids while my wife and I are off doing the golf and spa thing and it's on the beach in Puerto Rico, if there are any properties that match that query, that concept query, so all those terms coming together as one concept, they will come up. So, again, we are not spidering the internet; what we are doing is going to a directory of data and a catalog, if you will. And that catalog will have all of this information loaded into it so when I put that concept forward, it will deliver to me only those properties that have all of those elements I have put into the concept. So I might get back 1 response, I might get back 5. I certainly won't get hundreds, because it is very unlikely there would be hundreds of 5-star properties that have all those things that I just described on the beach in Puerto Rico.

Monte: Wow, and you'll be able to access that through going to the registrar or going directly to the .travel….

Ron A.: …[inaudible] route bar, you would type in directory.travel as you type in Google.com today.

Monte: Well, okay. So it's going to be its own search network that you guys are backing behind that.

Ron A.: That's right.

Monte: Oh, okay. That sounds like a unique offering.

Ron A.: It's because if you go in and type things like you give the name of the tour operators that provide submarine tours of the Titanic and you type that into the search engines today, you come back with everything from Titanic the movie, Titanic the ship, Leonardo DeCaprio biographies. It's silly, because that is not what you are looking for. You are actually looking for the tour operator who provides that service. If you were to type that into the directory.travel, you'd get back one response because there is only one operator who provides that service. But, it would be immediate; so, what we can tell you is that every response that you get through the directory will be a 100% match to your query; and if you have 10 links or 5 links that are there, you now know that every one of those is 100% match to you and you can go in and go click on those links and review what the different hotels or airlines or whoever that might be, what they have to offer and you make your selection and consummate your transaction directly on their web sites. So, what we do is we match buyers to sellers in a more efficient manner.

Monte: I see, I see. So, alright, because you are not really utilizing New-Levels as the registry, so you have the ability to spend time on providing key searches and getting people to really where they want to go since you are not operating necessarily the registry itself?

Ron A.: That's right. We subbed the directory out to a company called Wand, which is our provider in this area; and Wand has been providing this kind of a service for blue chip companies such as Bell Canada and others. So, they've been doing this for some time and have a very efficient system and we are very excited about this offering and what it will mean to the industry. Today, about $150 Billion transacts on line, which represents about 28.5% of all online transactions. But, amazingly, of the million entities that we view as our universe in traveling tours, meaning all buses, all airlines, all cab companies, etc., etc., within that million, having done an audit, we found that there were only about 40,000 domain names that had been registered, which seemed like an amazingly small number. But what shocked me all the more was that, while there may have been over roughly 40,000 domain names, there were only 8,000 active sites. So, if 8,000 active sites are sharing in $150 Billion, and in fact that's not true either because it's really the Expedias, the Travelocities, the Hotels.com, Southwest Airlines, the ones that are internet centric, those are the ones pulling down the majority of that money, if that's the case today, and we expand that from 8,000 sites to 80,000 sites, and then to 800,000 sites, what we are talking about is moving the dial from $150 Billion online transactions to $1.5 Trillion in a very short period of time.

Monte: Wow. Okay, so. That's very interesting, and now I'm starting to see a little bit more of the business model and it starts to make sense. So, just a couple really key questions here, from the travel community, have you got commitments from some of the major players, like Expedia.com, and Hotel.com, to move their sites over to use this .travel extension, or does that even matter to you based off of what you just revealed?

Ron A.: Well, the short answer is yes. We are in dialog with a number of organizations such as those and they have committed that they are anxious to have their .travel domain names. They understand what it means, they understand where it will go; but, the longer answer is, if you look at emerging markets, such as India and China, two-thirds of the global population of those two countries and both on the move in terms of travel and tourism, billions of people will move within those markets. So, it's really the SMEs, the small and medium sized enterprises around the world, mom-and-pop shops, whether they're travel agents or ground transportation, whatever they might be, that's where the masses of .travel domain names will reside. If Expedia or Travelocity says we don't want one for our Expedia or Travelocity, that's one name. It doesn't really have an impact on us whatsoever. But, having said that, would we like to have all of the industry involved whether they are online or offline, absolutely.

Monte: So, if Expedia says they're not going to register it, do they get a disadvantage in the new directory then?

Ron A.: Yea, the disadvantage that you're not in it. Once you get your domain name, you have access to be in the directory. If you don't have a domain name, you're not listed in the directory at all.

Monte: So that's a key reason why, even if they don't use it as their main site, to get it registered…they can even point it to the .com name, it doesn't matter. It gets them into the directory and at least gives the customer/user the ability to find them quicker.

Ron A.: Well, it's true, but I would say, and what I share with the industry is what I share with you right now, what the industry needs to do is move their industry off the .com or their .bix, whatever it may be, and put it onto their .travel site and point that other site to their .travel site. And why do I tell them that? It's because again of this whole idea of the authentication. When you have the kind of scrutiny that we're putting everyone through, everyone with a .travel domain name can take comfort that, if they want to deal with someone, I happen to be a travel agent up here in New York and I want to send someone to Patagonia and I need a ground operator down there to make sure my customers are well taken care of and I am transferring funds down there, if I never knew the guy before, never knew the operator, the trust factor and my ability to trade with that individual or that entity would go up significantly if they had a .travel domain name. Why? Because they had to go through exactly the same scrutiny that I did to get my name, so I know that they're bona fide. Secondly, if they did go through the authentication, they did it through Dun & Bradstreet or they did it through an association. If they did it through an association, I can contact that association and say, “You know what, you're operator screwed me and here's how it happened and here's the rationale behind it.” Now all of the sudden, the thing, the damage he thought was being done so far away on another continent is now in his back yard and now he looks bad in front of his own association. So, there could be a lot of reasons why people will take a .travel domain name, but those are certainly two that will encourage the trade and the consumer to understand the .travel means the trust factor and buying online travel and tourism has gone up significantly.

Monte: Okay, alright. Well, I mean I think that's going to be a big mountain to climb getting the key brands to move over to .travel; heck you know it's going to move in some other extensions, like .xxx. There's going to be some governmental reasons on why that move might be quicker than others; so, I don't see it as an impossibility. Just like with anything else, it will take time to win that over depending on how successful it will be. The big question is what's the cost going to be, what the proposed retail cost to the customers, and what are the restrictions behind the registration?

Ron A.: The retail price is going to be similar to all other sponsor top-level domains. So that's running about somewhere between $95 and $105. We anticipate that that price point will be maintained as well by our registrars. In terms of restrictions to get a name, there really is no restriction to get a name in the sense that anyone who is bona fide in the industry has a right to apply for it and will be vetted by their association by D&B. If they managed to cross that threshold, then the names that they are entitled to or have a legal right to belong to them.

Monte: This of course is here in the United States, but what if you are an international organization, or you're in Europe, or you're in Asia, or whatever, and you are not a member of D&B, or mentioned, or listed.

Ron A.: No, D&B is a global operation; and in fact, part of the process is that it's free to have a Duns number, there is no issue at all to get a Duns number, virtually all over the world. The only place there is an exception to that is in Bangladesh. In that case, what will happen is that the registrant will actually have to pay $10 to D&B to have the check done and, once they have been approved, D&B will refund that $10. So, effectively, everyone around the world has the same pricing. No one is penalized because of the nation they are living in. So, that's how that is being structured, but effectively it's a no-cost issue to get a Duns number.

Monte: Okay. Alright, so it's going to be like a $95 registration; so, it's not like other registrations. It's going to be more of a high-end registration, and what does it come with to give it that kind of value? Does it come with the travel directory submission?

Ron A.: Correct. The first two there will be value added services that will continue to roll out year by year. As I mentioned at the top of the call, we take a very long-term view; so, our job now is to establish the registry, establish the directory, and so we'll do that through authentication and through building the directory as we described. So, those are the first two value added benefits. As time goes by, things as digital certification and other types of things that will enhance the ability for all .travel registrants to enhance their online presence or online commerce. So, we will continue to roll out more and more added value services over time.

Monte: That's great. Now, just one more question. I know you're running a little on schedule and I told you we'd be done around 7:30 and I do have another guest to get on. If there are two registrants that are going after the.travel name…let's say I'm Best Western and I have a hotel chain and own a bunch of hotels and then I'm Hotels.com and I want to register the .travel name, who has the right to Hotels.travel?

Ron A.: No one. Hotels, air, cruise, bus, all the generic words in the travel and tourism industry are reserved. They belong to the entire industry, not to one individual or entity.

Monte: So, who's going to be allowed to register those?

Ron A.: No one.

Monte: No one. So they are going to be held to the side of the registry?

Ron A.: Correct.

Monte: Oh, I see. All the generic travel domains will be held, regardless if it's somebody's name even?

Ron A.: That correct. There's an example where…let me think of one that would make some sense.

Monte: Hotels.com is going to say, “Hey, we should have the rights to this. You know this is our brand.”

Ron A.: And they would have a right to again, all of the names that they submit in the authentification forms will explain all of the possibilities they can have. The one they would like to have, Hotels.travel, doesn't exist. So, therefore, it would not be on that list.

Monte: Right, right. Okay, well great. Is there anything else you would like to share with us? When is our timeline for lunch?

Ron A.: Well, we're in a T-minus kind of countdown as we speak. We're finalizing a couple of things with Ican, then we need to get Iana to turn it on, we're going to be doing system testing in the May-June time period, and we anticipate about the last week or so of June through the last week of August, we'll be doing the preauthentification and preregistration. And then, provided that all is going well and that we've got a good system without bottlenecks and without issues, we will then be actually beginning what we refer to as a limited launch. As you know, Monte, we can't just throw it open to all, but have to have a limited audience that we start with so we can demonstrate that there are no issues with regard to denials or bottlenecks and so forth. That would mean that the limited launch would begin approximately September 1 and run through November. Then the December-January time we will be opening up on a broader basis for a broader community. At this point, if you were to go to TTPC.org, you will see that there are well over 100 travel trade associations that have committed to the project and they are all anxious to bring their members online with .travel domain names. So, we want to work with those folks to make sure that all of the things that they have to do in terms of vetting their members and so forth goes without too much issue considering they need really to continue to do the business they do every day on top of the .travel initiative.

Monte: Okay. Well that's great info Ron. I really appreciate your time and it sounds exciting. I must admit I think it is a very unique approach and has some advantages that would give it some more acceptance among your industry, amongst the travel industry, than let's say a .museum or a .arrow, where they really haven't taken off at all. But I like the approach because of the directory approach; you know, the search world is getting confusing and people aren't getting exactly what they want. So, I think this could be a good idea.

Ron A.: Again, thanks very much for the invitation and I hope that we shed some light on different things for your listeners. If anyone has questions and would like to be on the update list with regard to .travel, then by all means they can send an email to HYPERLINK "mailto:info@truliance.info" info@truliance.info and someone from our customer care will be responding back to them as quickly as possible.

Monte: Soon to be .travel instead of .info, I assume.

Ron A.: Soon, very soon. We're looking forward to it. I'm holding back on printing my business cards.

Monte: Okay, great Ron. We'll talk again once we get closer to go live and get an update.

Ron A.: Okay, Monte. Thanks very much.

Monte: Alright. Stay tuned. We're going to get a quick update with Ron Jackson. Be on in a couple of minutes.

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello, welcome back to the show. My next guest everyone knows. Ron Jackson from DN Journal. We've got just a quick 3 to 4 minute update on what's going on in the domain industry and then we've got to break out. My first interview obviously went too long. Hey, Ron, welcome to the show.

Ron J.: Thanks, Monte, good to talk to you again.

Monte: Sorry for the late connection, but the .travel industry sounds like it's going to explode.

Ron J.: Very interesting to hear his views on that, and we'll see how that whole thing plays out. But, no problem at all, I was enjoying that myself.

Monte: Yea, definitely. Just give us a 3-minute or 4-minute recap of the last couple weeks. I know there have been some significant sales, and then we've gotta book. I apologize for the short update; but we'll catch up maybe next week.

Ron J.: Not a problem. The upshot of the whole thing is that things are booming like crazy. This past week, in fact, I think we had more significant sales reported than we've had in any week in 2005. It's in our current domain sales report that came out last night. Every domain in our top 10 was at least five figures. The number one domain was just short of six figures. OLT.com went for $93,000; and I actually heard from the seller, who told me in a separate arrangement the buyer had agreed to pay the entire commission to [inaudible], and that was not included in the $93,000. So, in fact, it looks like the buyer paid in six figures for that domain name. And we're just seeing the activity breaking out across the board. It doesn't matter which venue you talk to. If you look through that report, they are reporting some tremendous sales activity; and we are also getting reports left and right from individuals who have been involved in private transactions who are doing really well. And what else is going on is catching the attention of the mainstream media more and more. In fact, Newsweek Magazine has an article coming out on domains that should be out here at any time now. Katherine Williams, the writer, told me she would be dropping me a note as soon as it is posted. It's going to be an exclusive on Newsweek.com and it will be in their business section. She's talked to a number of leaders in the industry; so you know when they start putting our story out there in Time and Newsweek, you know we're going mainstream. That's better than being a purely business publication, say a Business Week or a Wall Street Journal, because now we're getting right down to the man on the street and getting our story out there.

Monte: Okay, great. And I've gotta say that we just closed a deal today on a $400,000+ name. I can't say which name it is though, but it's a 2-letter domain. So the industry's on fire in that respect; and obviously, the meetings, the upcoming traffic shows are going to validate that again. Seeing a lot of transaction activity going on here at Moniker as well.

Ron J.: You may have noticed that the cover of Business Week this week was about blogs and how those are exploding, how businesses are using them now in marketing. There is a side bar on the cover that is pointing to additional exclusive material on the Business Week web site, so that just shows you all the opportunities there are for people in the public, both individuals and businessmen, to use domain names and it just portends of such great things for our business because the uses for domain names are exploding. So, when you get right down to base registrations all the way up through the high ticket sales, it's all good.

Monte: That's great. Well, Ron, I really appreciate it. We've gotta end things because, as everybody can see on the chat board, the Blowsearch Town Hall Meeting is next up on Webmaster Radio.FM and it's going to be right behind me. So, I really want to thank you for your short amount of time and, of course, we'll catch up as we get closer to the upcoming meetings and events; and thanks for committing to giving us a little bit of an update.

Ron J.: I'm always happy to do it.

Monte: Okay, thanks a lot, Ron. Take care. Guys and girls, gotta leave. Blowsearch Town Hall Meeting is next up on Webmaster Radio.FM. Glad we were able to have a unique show about some of the new extensions that are out and, again, I'll have the .job guys on very soon, and in about two weeks the .xxx guys. So, thanks again for listening. Give me some feedback at HYPERLINK "mailto:Monte@Moniker.com" Monte@Moniker.com on what kind of stuff you want to hear and I'll try to get it to you. Have a good week.

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