Donuts Announces Launch of .Travel Top-Level Domain

SEATTLE, June 21, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Donuts Inc., the global leader in high-quality, new top-level Internet domains, today announced the re-launch of the .travel top-level domain (TLD), which it had acquired earlier this year. Donuts has simplified the registration process, making it much easier for registrars to offer the domain for sale, and easier for individuals and businesses to acquire a .travel domain name. In fact, .travel registrars now include GoDaddy, Encirca and Name.com.

"GoDaddy is focused on providing the best possible domain extensions to our customers and .travel  is an example of that," said Paul Bindel, GoDaddy senior director of marketing – domains. "The .travel extension is memorable and tells visitors exactly what the website is about.  With the number of people who do travel research online, this extension makes a ton of sense."

It's expected that global digital travel sales will surpass $200 billion by 2019¹. Earlier in 2018, Donuts acquired the .travel TLD due to strong growth in the category, the exceptionally high quality of registrants in the .travel domain, and the strength and complementarity of the company's existing travel-related TLD portfolio. Since the acquisition, Donuts has simplified the registration process, enabling registrants to stay on the registrar's website for the entirety of the registration/checkout process.  Donuts believes that this streamlined registration process will increase registrations, as compared to the previous process, which was disjointed and complex for registrants.

"Travel is a thriving category and the .travel TLD is the centerpiece of a high-quality portfolio that includes .cruises, .flights, .rentals, .holiday, .reise, .reisen, .tours, .vacations, .viajes, .voyage and more," said John Pollard, executive vice president and general manager of Donuts' registry. "By simplifying the registration process, we've expanded the availability and accessibility of .travel. We welcome GoDaddy, Name.com and Encirca in joining us in the .travel re-launch."

The Donuts travel TLD portfolio is ideal for travel agencies and adventure companies, hotels, hostels, bed & breakfast hosts, local resource sites and tourist attractions, travel writers and bloggers, and luggage and other travel-related retailers. TLDs such as .properties and .rentals are resonating with those looking to maximize their offers across multiple vacation rental sites. In fact, earlier in 2018, the domain name www.vacation.rentals was purchased for over $500,000, by an entrepreneur that has launched a competitor site to VRBO and HomeAway.

Recent research affirms the growing importance of web links that use real words. In a survey conducted by Sapio Research and commissioned by Donuts, respondents overwhelmingly opted for branded short links using real words, over links containing long strings of characters and / or legacy short links. Reasons for preferring branded short links using real words included: more meaningful information, clarity of content, identification with the brand, trust and greater simplicity. To learn more about this survey, click here.

About Donuts

Donuts simplifies and connects a fragmented online world with domain names and related technologies that allow people and businesses to build, market and own their digital identities. Donuts holds the world's largest portfolio of new top-level domains, and offers a wide variety of clear and meaningful names for use as business identifiers (such as .ltd, .company), navigation (such as .careers, .support), in vertical markets (such as .photography, .cafe,  or .builders) or in broad-based generics (such as .life, .world or .live). Donuts provides its registrar / reseller customers with innovative services for the discovery, registration, usage and monetization of high-quality domain names. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Donuts, the registrar Name.com is one of the most admired brands in the industry. In 2017, Donuts was named Number 1 in the Deloitte Fast 500. Donuts' headquarters are in Kirkland, WA; it has offices in Denver, CO; Austin, Tx; Washington, DC; Dublin, Ireland and Beijing, China.

¹ https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Drives-Growth-of-Online-Travel-Bookings/1016053

Contact:
Judith McGarry
(415) 971-2900
judith@donuts.email

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SOURCE Donuts Inc.