As a successful business for over 26 years, Irvine Travel has seen the
change in it's core operating business migrate from a phone based to an Internet
based system. Since it's inception the WWW has proved immensely critical
to the daily operation of any travel agency in the U.S. and am sure abroad was
well.
To date there has been not WWW recognition of TRAVEL as a viable top level
domain for certified travel agencies. This has been an oversight and which
ignores all travel agencies, travel management companies, airlines, hotel and
car chains, and leisure product providers such as Cruise/Tour operators.
The travel industry is known to be the 2nd/3rd most controllable expense in
business expense today - yet it's significance is not reflected in the "dot
com" world.
It is becoming increasingly more difficult for travel industry agents to
identify themselves via their email/Web presence. With proper
certification from IATAN (International Airlines Travel Agent Network) or ARC
(Airlines Reporting Corporation) or any other viable resource a real travel
service provider could establish a presence and would be easily
identifiable to clients/vendors and business associates.
To this end I purchased a .TRAVEL domain from New.net, Inc. in anticipation
of ICANN encouraging the implementation of .TRAVEL as a TLD.
They have been helpful and extremely supportive - I would not want to be
forced to re-register my domain at my cost because of failed agreements between
ICANN or New.net. I would prefer to have my domain grandfathered into the
new ICANN TLD's. If this requires some kind of certification, I would be
happy to pursue this avenue to guarantee the TLD is not abused.
Thanks
Max Noxon