TravelMole Interview: Ron Andruff, Tralliance

Tralliance president and CEO Ron Andruff is confident that a dot travel domain name for the industry could soon be a reality.

Tralliance is the US firm behind the sponsored bid to get a Top Level Domain name for the industry. Last October IATA and Tralliance agreed to fold their two competing dot travel applications into one in the hope that this would increase their chance of success. And according to Mr Andruff after almost three years the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICAAN) could announce that it will give dot travel the go-ahead in December.

However Mr Andruff is taking nothing for granted. He told TravelMole: “I never want to be presumptuous in case something comes out of nowhere. But the fact is the travel industry is the world’s largest employer and in terms of revenue it’s the biggest generator on the internet. The whole industry wants it. ICAAN is not a judicial body to say it can or cannot be allowed. If the criteria are met it has to go forward.”

Tralliance has more reason than most for wanting the domain name to be approved. It wants to produce the definitive internet directory for the travel industry, which it claims will move travel industry searches into the next generation. According to Mr Andruff current industry searches are too general. He claims for example that a search for ‘tour operators that offer submarine tours of the Titanic’ would currently bring up dozens of sites featuring Leonardo DiCaprio. In contrast he claims, the equivalent Tralliance search would drill down to the one tour operator that offered that service.

He told TravelMole: “We will be able to index the whole industry and it will be very clean, there won’t be any advertising. It’s not a search engine but a quality-based pointer. If the end user – trade or consumer – know what they want to do but not where they can do it they will be able to query the data.”

For example, Mr Andruff said that a user could type in ‘photographic safari’ and would see a list of relevant tour operators offering that product. He claimed: “It’s taking the internet to the next level with robust, intuitive searching.”

The price for entry in the new directory has still to be decided, with a high level meeting at World Travel Market set to discuss this further. However what is known is that there will be a one-time application fee, along with an annual subscription fee. Mr Andruff said: “We’ve not found the sweet spot yet. It’s not going to be outrageous and I would hope that over time the price point would fall – not just because I’m a big hearted Canadian – but because obviously in the early days you have the initial start up costs.”

The fact that the dot travel domain name is suddenly becoming more of a reality perhaps explains why Tralliance recently held meetings with US domain name firm New.net in a bid to resolve their differences. New.net has already sold thousands of registrations for dot travel addresses. But because the domain name has not yet received approval by ICAAN these sites are only accessible to people with special software or who have an ISP that is partnering with the firm.

Mr Andruff commented: “New.net is not the authoritative route but an alternative route. Should its members want to join the authoritative route we want to make sure they don’t get lost in the shuffle.”

But he stressed that companies who had already signed up for the New.net dot travel address would not receive priority treatment because very strict policies for entry in the directory will be put in place. For example, every application has to vetted and authenticated by the relevant industry association – such as ABTA for agents in the UK.

Perhaps surprisingly given the delay, Mr Andruff is not critical of the length of time that the ICAAN process has taken. Instead he believes that it is only correct that ICAAN is cautious and does not rush into a hasty decision.

He told TravelMole: “It’s been 26 months since we started the process. We have got to look at the global good of the internet . The body responsible is ICAAN and they really need to know who is applying, what’s behind them and what they stand for. I’m not a fan of the delays but I do appreciate it takes a certain amount of time.”

See our previous article:

22-Aug-2003: Dot-travel domain comes a step closer