The company that planned to auction off the domain ‘holiday.com’ at World Travel Market this week failed to get the holding price.
London-based Breathe Luxury had hoped to raise up to £20 million for the domain name, which it believes is the ‘holy grail’ of online travel.
But it said the highest bid it received was for £4.7 million, just under the £5 million starting price.
MD Farad Laforce blamed a last-minute change of venue for the failure.
The auction of the domain, plus other key travel-related website addresses, was due to take place in a theatre at London Excel at 5.30pm on Wednesday.
But on Wednesday morning, the company had to find another venue.
"We only got the new venue at 11am. It was all a bit confusing with times and everything and we had to contact all the bidders who were flying in to tell them about the change," he said.
He said it wasn’t Breathe Luxury’s decision to move the auction to a venue outside WTM, but did not disclose the reasons why.
"It’s one of those things," he said. "We got very close to the asking prices for all of the domain names so now we will be contacting all the bidders again.
"We honestly believe that holiday.com is the holy grail in travel, particularly for the UK market."
