You ask why ? Very simple.
I happened to discover following sentences on the official web page operated by ICANN's accredited company Tralliance Corporation ( who will be contracted for selling those .travel domains ):
It's about targeted search engine ( Global industry search engine ):
Is the .travel Directory a search engine?
It is more than a search engine. A search engine is as valuable as the data that is available to it. The prevalent consumer search engines are reliant solely on web site data, which is incomplete, changeable and chaotic. The .travel Directory will have data detailing all products and services that are being offered and such data will be provided by the travel businesses themselves. This data will be accessible through a custom-made taxonomy or controlled vocabulary, developed specifically for travel Industry. Tralliance's extensive industry data and indexing technology will enable sophisticated search capabilities to deliver very specific information to each query.
The selling of .travel domains hasn't started yet. It begins around early June. But what's interesting to me in the whole story is a goal of the .travel directory that will be very targeted, operated on non-commercial terms.
The importance of travel industry all around the world is tremendouse and will be interesting to see how the ''attention'' competion will start. How those brands will be satisfied with the service of such a neutral search engine ?
But, look at that what Tralliance Corp will do with its directory for travel industry:
Consumers will not pay for access to your directory information, nor will Tralliance charge industry members for order of placements in the list of responses from a search query.
What ? Business Week cited in their article some older data ( but it shows some indications ) :
The travel industry is one of the largest buyers of advertising on Google, which reportedly pulled in gross revenues in 2003 of close to $1 billion -- mostly from online advertising sales.
Significant or insignificant for targeted advertising in the long run ? I think there will be present need for the sponsored search and visibility on general search engines because that's where the action is ( an ordinary consumer ).
