This is an interesting article that Jens Thraenhart has done an outstanding job researching.  I believe it is imperative to make this topic main stream in the domain industry so those who invested in this extention are aware of the deception ongoing with the extention.  I was very hesitant to do an article on the .travel extention management corruption, until there was proper research and evidence provided.  This extention would have been outstanding geo domains and would have propelled the geo domain industry into the stratusphere.  Unfortunately, under the current management, this may never become a reality due to greed.     

There has not been alot of news on this extention since its initial launch.  The only news has been press releases by Tralliance, the managers of the extention.  A large amount of business owners and domainers invested large volumes of revenue in this extention during the sunrise period.  I believe the cost was $99 and you had to validate credentials that you were in the travel industry.  In December 2007, the criteria to register a .travel domain was relaxed and thousands of domains were released to the public for registration, or at least that is what the press release said.

The article goes into detail and unfolds the truth about .travel.  I will do a part 2 on this topic once I receive some emails from a credible source and discuss more in detail.

Gone the dream of order in online travel. The opportunity to build consumers’ trust shattered.

But who is to blame in the end?

• Is it Ron Andruff and his founding Tralliance team, for needing an investor that unfortunately had a different agenda?
• Is it Ed Cespedes and Michael Eagan from The Globe, the new Tralliance Management: for trying to make money quickly off a great concept, but in their haste destroying the value proposition?
• Is it the TTPC Board of Directors under chairmanship of Birger Bachman, for not guarding the “crown jewels” and therefore letting the value proposition dilute, and for not listening to the outrcrys from the travel industry?
• Is it ICANN, the governing body of Internet domain names, for not taking back the dot travel domain name when the strategy went into a different direction?
• Is it the global Travel and Tourism industry, for not embracing the dot travel domain name extension fast enough, that motivated the new Tralliance Management to open registration up to make money?
• Is it the UNWTO, the World Tourism Organization, and travel trade associations all over the world (such as PATA, DMAI, ASTA, NTA, etc.), for not stepping in and get more involved to make dot travel a UNWTO priority earlier?
• Is it National Tourism Organizations and Destination Marketing Organizations for not encouraging their industry partners and members more aggressively to register their names?
• Or is it maybe even the Consumer for not embracing the dot travel domain fast enough to show value to doubting travel organizations?

(via HospitalityNet.org)