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Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, 08/18/2005 – ICANN Board approved the designation of .travel at the 22nd ICANN International conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina on last April 2005. This new TDL will enhance service provided by vendors/suppliers who aim to support and/or provide the end customer with travel experience. Also very recently ICANN announced it would delay the launch of TLD .xxx intended to be used for adult content. Further correspondence has been posted on subject on ICANN official website.
Travel & Tourism is the world's largest industry and accounts for 11% of the world GDP and 8% of total employment. It has been described as one of the most powerful global forces for positive change and development in an economy and a society. Forrester Research predicted that by 1999 travel would be the number one electronic commerce category, with sales topping $2.8 billion.
The Travel & Tourism Industry.
Historically, the industry has been an early adopter of new technologies, for instance Computer Reservation systems (CRS). As technology becomes more pervasive, traditional consumers begin to use tools formerly reserved for travel professionals. In the case of CRS, consumers who have access to similar systems through their home computers and open networks can now take over some functions traditionally performed by travel agents.
Some other trends affecting the travel & tourism industry are:
· Code-sharing agreements between business partners
· Scheduling and marketing pacts between top airlines
· Consolidations/Mergers/Acquisitions
· Commission capping by airlines
· Intermodal transportation
· Privatisation of airlines and airports
· Outsourcing (legal, financial, consultants, IT etc services)
· Wireless Travel Service (joint project Delta/IBM/Modern Media Poppe Tyson)
· Travel Superstores; offering everything from luggage to guidebooks to full reservations under one roof. Ex TravelFest Superstores.
· Green Travel; 83% of travellers are inclined to support “green” travel companies and are willing to spend on average 6.2% more for travel services and products provided by environmentally responsible travel suppliers.
· 20% of all business trips include two household members, 28% included some time for pleasure travel and 38% included an overnight weekend stay.
About ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. These services were originally performed under U.S. Government contract by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and other entities. ICANN now performs the IANA function.
As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.
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