NATIONS’ PRIORITY RIGHT — OVERVIEW AND PROCESS

BACKGROUND

Tralliance Corporation, the .travel Registry, is offering all national governments the sole right to their specific country names. Tralliance has reserved the domain names of all geographic and geopolitical names, both in English and in all respective official languages.

Though nations will always have the sole right to their country names (as noted on the Place Name Reserved List) this is not the case for Place Names. Place Names are defined as cities, towns, heritage sites, pilgrim centers, sacred sites, national parks/preserves, etc.

The WTO is playing a direct role in recommending that your nation’s Place Names are registered by your eligible government entities.

PROCESS

Step 1 – Place Name Reserve List

Tralliance created a Place Names Reserved List which can be accessed at nuremberg laws

Entities had until September 25th, 2005 to notify Tralliance if their name was not included in the Place Names Reserved List, upon which, such supplemental Place Names were added.

Step 2 – Apply to Register Domain Names

From October 1st to December 31st, 2005, each government authority for every Place on the Complete Place Names Reserved List must send a letter on their letterhead to Tralliance Corporation to apply for the .travel Internet domain names they would like to claim.

Kindly submit letters in English to:

Manager - Administration
Tralliance Corporation
220 Fifth Avenue, 20 th floor
New York, NY 10001
United States


Please note that any Place Names not applied for by the December 31st, 2005 deadline will be returned to the general pool of domain names, allowing any travel entities that have a legal right to a name to secure unclaimed Place Names.

"Doing Business As" (DBA) Names

In addition, DBA (doing business as) names, for example, www.visitvienna.travel or www.mozartcity.travel may be applied for immediately. Please go to the Tralliance web site (www.tralliance.travel) and begin the process of authentication by clicking on either “Authentication Providers” (to check to see if you are a member of any of the authenticating travel trade associations) or “D&B” and follow the instructions. In this way, any and all domain names – other than Place Names (from the Complete Place Names List) – that your Place would like to reserve can be applied for immediately, according to .travel policies. This does not mean, however, that every DBA name each Place applies for is automatically reserved for that Place, as the “first come, first served” (at the time of registration) rule will apply in these cases. For this reason, WTO encourages you to go through the authentication process and apply for any DBA names you may want to claim as soon as possible.

Largest Population Priority Rights

.travel policies also provide for a Larger Population priority right whereby larger population cities have first claim to their names over smaller cities or towns, e.g. www.paris.travel would be registered to Paris, France rather than Paris, Texas, if both were claimants for that city domain name. The Larger Population priority right will also expire on December 31st, 2005. As such, any city name that has not been applied for – in the same manner as Place Names – will be available for registration after March 31st, 2006, by any other travel or tourism entity that legally uses that city name.

Step 3 – Registration of Your Domain Names

Between January 1st and 16th, 2006, Tralliance Corporation will send out the individual Names Lists (a list of names available for purchase by a particular Place that had been applied for in Step 2 above) and a Unique Identifying Number (UIN) to every Place that applied for .travel domain names.

Registration Process

From January 16th, 2006 until March 31st, 2006, each Place can register and purchase the domain name(s) noted on their respective names lists through the .travel accredited Registrar of their choosing, with their UIN. A complete list of .travel accredited registrars is posted on the Tralliance web site (www.tralliance.travel). You will find the cost of purchasing a .travel domain name on the web sites of each accredited registrar. The accredited registrars are the only entities authorized to register .travel domain names, so please be sure to use one of them to purchase your .travel domain names.

Any Place Names that are not registered between Janaury 16th and March 31st, 2006 will be released for general registration by those travel and tourism entities that have been authenticated to have eligibility to hold those names.

The .travel TLD industry initiative is fully supported by the WTO, however Tralliance Corporation – the .travel Registry – is the contact for any questions you may have in this regard.

They can be reached by sending an email to [email protected].
If anything in this advisory is unclear, please contact the .travel Registry at the email address noted above to ensure that no misunderstandings occur.

In closing, the WTO urges you to make this matter a priority to protect your Internet name(s) – to ensure that you have the domain names that rightfully belong to your country – today and in the future.

Thank you for your urgent attention to this matter.

 

 

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