A "TOP LEVEL DOMAIN" FOR THE WORLD'S TRAVEL INDUSTRY

IATA has taken an important and timely initiative to help improve the standards and security of Internet trading - and to provide other important benefits for the global travel industry and its customers around the world. It has applied to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - ICANN - to create a new ".travel" internet Top Level Domain - TLD - focused on the travel industry. IATA is pleased that its application has today been accepted for consideration by ICANN.

Travel and tourism currently contributes more than USD 3,500 billion to the world's economy, or nearly 12 percent of the total - and it is growing fast. When allied to growing use of the Internet, the industry has the potential to offer vastly improved consumer choices.

IATA's innovative proposal involves working with major travel associations and organisations from around the world to apply objective, transparent, criteria to requests for ".travel" domain names. Thus, consumers would have greater confidence when doing business with ".travel" websites.

IATA's proposal also contains measures to discourage re-selling domain names for profit and "cybersquatting."

Director General Pierre J. Jeanniot, O.C. said, "IATA is uniquely positioned to sponsor application for a ".travel" TLD. For 55 years, its core activities have centred on setting industry standards, to aid cooperation among travel industry suppliers, for the benefit of their customers. In this digital age, IATA wishes to extend its traditional role of support for the travel community, to help the industry and its customers to fully exploit the potential of the Internet."

As a not-for-profit organisation, IATA would operate the ".travel" TLD on a cost recovery basis.

For the broader Internet community, IATA's proposal offers the potential to introduce a new alternative in the provision of registry services. Registry services for the proposed TLD are to be provided by JVTeam - a joint venture of Neustar Inc and Melbourne IT. They bring significant operational and technical expertise and experience to the proposal.