Dot’s Right, It’s Your Name—

By Peter Coloyan

During the recent Travel Trade CRUISE-A-THON in Seattle, I attended many wonderful seminars, heard leading suppliers vouch their continuing support for the travel agent distribution system and was very lucky to meet many of the attending travel agents and suppliers.
And, since I am the consummate travel “Internet Junkie” — my thanks to Martha Powell for conferring this title upon me at CRUISE-A-THON — an avid domain name collector and a 10-year veteran of the “online marketplace,” I was honored to be asked to be on the Technology Panel with nine very well-known industry colleagues.
It was immediately after this panel concluded that I met M. Camille Coleman of DeTours Inc., Flint, MI and Karen Seyfert of Main Connection Travel, Lewistown, MT. These two wonderful ladies are both very experienced travel agents. I believe Coleman has been to 20 CRUISE-A-THONs (I was truly impressed) and Seyfert is one of the last bastions of tradition, as she continues to run a storefront retail travel agency.
If asked, they both may tell you that I helped them, but I am here to tell you that they really helped me! They made my day, week and more by allowing me to do what I am very passionate about — helping the travel agent to better understand and utilize the Internet to their advantage. It is so important to your future success, and our future success as an industry!
Coleman had never had her own domain name or Web site, and was unsure where to start. Seyfert had fallen into the host-registrar trap several years ago — she had registered her domain name through the same company that would host her site and, as has happened to so many, she lost her domain name when the host neglected to renew it before its expiration.
Please understand that this can happen for many reasons, and protecting your domain name is as important a part of your Internet marketing as anything. If you lose it, you could lose years of work and, potentially, a good portion of your customer base!
Luckily for us, Jurni was once again sponsoring the Internet Kiosk, which was about 50 feet away. In about five minutes, we were able to acquire domain names for both DeTours, Inc. (detoursinc.com) and Main Connection Travel (mainconnectiontravel.com), which were then locked in by their respective, new, appropriate owners for five years, giving them peace of mind and avoiding issues of renewals until that time.
Of course, now both will need to have their Web sites developed, hosted and maintained, but the most important part of their future online marketing endeavors was taken care of! In about the same amount of time it takes to buy something on eBay, or to order a couple of movies from Netflix, they secured their online future — and you can do the same!
Also remember — as I have brought it up here before, and reiterated it on the technology panel in Seattle — that the dot-travel Web suffix will be coming out soon. Everyone who has or gets their dot-com domain name (THE most important — don’t ever give it up!) should also register for their dot-travel domain name when that process begins.
You can follow the progress of dot-travel’s launching at www.tralliance.info, which is the home site for the governing body that will assign the dot-travel domain names.
Protect your future — it will rely on the Internet! Get your domain name and secure your domain name. If you don’t, someone else will!

Peter Coloyan has been in the travel industry for over 20 years. He embraced the Internet at its beginning and has flourished with it. He currently writes on, as well as edits, over 100 travel-related Web sites.