Update: Tour.com owner, WJ Lee, says he has had the domain for 10 years and is selling because he wants to concentrate on his other business. He was going to put a price tag of more than $3 million on it and received an offer of $4 million several years ago.
Original story below:
What price a travel domain? Well, it seems Tour.com is up for sale at the rock bottom price of $3 million.
It's just a guide price but it will be interesting to see what (and if) it gets snapped up for.
There's very little information available about who is selling it except that, according to who.is, it's a seven-year old domain which was up for sale for $1.3 million about a month ago.
That's seems like quite a price hike but perhaps recent activity in the tours and activities sector, most recently news that Google is eyeing up the space, has pushed the price up.
Interesting to note, especially given that .tour is one gTLD that could come up in the coming weeks, it is non other than Google which has applied for the string.
Tnooz has put some of these questions to Tour.com and will update with any responses.
A further trawl, using Web Archive, shows the domain has been used as a travel information portal - a sort of yellow pages for travel (in Korean) in the past 10 years.
Back in 2009, four travel-related domains reaped $4.5 million with the purchase of fly.com (by Travelzoo), listed as the largest at $1.8 million.
But, according to this article, vacationrentals.com comes top of the domain sales fetching a cool $35 million in 2007 while runner-up was privatejet.com at a mere $30.18 million.
In the past three years, according to information from domain specialist Sedo, a number of premium travel domain sales have taken place:
- Jerusalem.com - $510,000
- Visitstockholm.com - $70,000
- wellnessfinder.com - Euro 300,000
- sommerhus.dk (Danish summer house rentals) - Euro 87,500
- gruppenreisen.de (group travel in German) - Euro 59,500
- hoteles.es (hotels in Spanish) - Euro 275,000
- xinjian.com (a region of China) - $55,000
The company adds that there are more affordable domain such as visiteastlondon, which was sold for $490.
A spokesperson says interest in domain names is high from the travel industry because of increasing numbers of specific travel experiences.
"Everything that is developing as a trend in the industry will be reflected through domains sooner or later."
The company adds that it has already sold 24 domains with the .travel generic top level domain and that as more endings coming this year, the industry will have a wider variety of domain names to choose from.
There's good insight here on breaking down domain names.
NB: Travel domains signpost image via Shutterstock.