Keeping track of travel domain names is no small achievement. I'm
working at it, honest I am, but separating the almost-identically
named players requires close attention.
Consider two examples:
Two heavily promoted sites at the moment are lowestfare.com and
lowairfare.com. Is that too close for your comfort?
And how do consumers remember which is which?
Let me see if I can get this right. I've been studying it for a
while.
Lowestfare.com is the Carl Icahn-owned company. I think this is
the one that got off the ground when Icahn settled his business
with TWA and wound up with a bazillion of the airline's tickets to
sell until the next millennium. This company also is buying tour
operators such as Jetset and Maupintour.
Lowairfare.com is the outfit down in Florida that Peter Sontag,
the former Gelco and USTravel Systems chief, is running. It's
affiliated with a firm called 800 Travel Systems and does most of
its business via 800-number call centers but it also has this site
that includes the ability to click into a "live agent" who will
help clients through the booking process.
So far as I've been able to gather, while we have "low" and
"lowest," I don't think there's a "lower" fares site although there
is one called "lowerairfares" that says it's under construction. I
can't wait for it to join the fun.
Try this matchup for size: Lastminute.com and Lastminutetravel.com. Let's see how I do this time
around.
Lastminute.com is a British-based site but, of course, with the
Web, every site is international by definition. It's not the same
thing as opening up brick-and-mortar businesses with the same name
(Jones Travel in Pittsburgh and Jones Travel in London).
Lastminutetravel.com is an outfit based in Atlanta and run by
David Miranda.
There are significant differences, I'm sure, but essentially
these sites are aimed at the folks who are able to pick up and go
somewhere at the click of a link. Remember now: lastminute.com is
the U.K. one, and lastminutetravel.com is the American one.
I checked on "lastminutetrips" and that took me through to a
Northwest page and then automatically back to lastminutetravel.com
so it looks as if they have that one registered.
Am I the only one confused by all this?