Australian Govt pays $201,000 for domain

[Garry Anderson]

Somebody had the good idea to register TourismAustralia.com first

Surprised AU Govt did not try to steal this domain in UDRP.

Seems they do not like TourismAustralia.AU or .COM.AU etc. - maybe because .COM is more marketable.

http://news.com.au/common/story_page...E15318,00.html

[Honan]

Somebody had the good idea to register TourismAustralia.com first

Surprised AU Govt did not try to steal this domain in UDRP.

Seems they do not like TourismAustralia.AU or .COM.AU etc. - maybe because .COM is more marketable.

http://news.com.au/common/story_page...E15318,00.html

Look who got the money
"Mr Haycraft, Victorian branch manager with the Australian Tourism Export Council and a former ATC employee, would say only that he had been assured the price would not be revealed. "

[Garry Anderson]

Still his clever idea first.

I see nothing wrong on the face of it - unless it was some sort of underhand insider deal.

[Garry Anderson]

However - it may explain why AU Govt did not try to steal this domain in UDRP

[seeker]

could they have actually been able to take this domain???

No TM violations, he could easily be running a business out of that site, no???

[sasquatch]

Good news for all the com domainers, bad news for all the fans of new extensions (and yes, that includes Duke

But, those people should be jailed! Spending about $ 130k US on a relatively stupid domain name, which they need to market anyway, is outright dumb. I mean, they could have reged anything for very little and market it the same way they will market this crap. Or they could have spend no more than $5k on .info extension. In addition, Tourism-Australia.com, also belongs to AU government and it sitting there waisted. And, how about .org? It also appears that those people also already own Australia.com, and SeeAustralia.com...

This AU senator had put it best:

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Senator O'Brien said he was amazed it was considered appropriate to select a name that came with such a high price-tag and he suspected the Government could have bargained harder.

"It's remarkable the Government picked a name knowing there was a cost to it," Senator O'Brien said. "It's regrettable and you could have done something better with the money - it's not as if it's an organisation to be marketed, it's there to do the marketing."
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That's my exact sentiment. They could have make up any other regfee combo name, or buy an existing .com for less than the price of that guy's attorney.

Anyway, this is the typical case of financial irresponsibility that governments world over are well known for.

I guess, when you're footing a bill with other people's money (taxpayers) you simply don't care.

Disgusting.

[Garry Anderson]

Seeker> could they have actually been able to take this domain???

With WIPO monkeys anything is possible - see Barcelona.com example.

[seeker]

had never heard of this.
Its maddness! Barcelona.com was 'taken' away!????

[Garry Anderson]

Cappuccino - I certainly agree AU citizens have to question the competence of ATC buyers when they have Australia.com.

However - the value of any domain is in the eye of the beholder.

TourismAustralia.com seems to me a very good name for this purpose.

However, no use asking me what it is worth - my valuation skills are not up to much.

I would need to know how much will be spent on marketing and the expected returns on this investment.

[sasquatch]

Cappuccino - I certainly agree AU citizens have to question the competence of ATC buyers when they have Australia.com.

However - the value of any domain is in the eye of the beholder.

TourismAustralia.com seems to me a very good name for this purpose.

I don't mean to say that the name is stupid in any traditional way, because it is not. It certainly is meaningful and logical, BUT, its also too generic, and too bureaucratic sounding, and too akward imho. In fact, if you look at the other major English speaking countries - NONE have that particular name. There's no TourismUsa .com or TourismCanada .com or TourismUK .com, or TourismSouthAfrica .com... Heck, TourismUnitedKingdom .com is not even registered??? So, all I am saying, Australia as a country, and their tourism board, could do without it just as well.

Btw, .org extension is more appropriate extension for this name. Which by the way they seem to have, because it resolves to .com version. So, my question is whether they had that before (and they weren't happy solely with it,) or did it came in the package deal? (Wayback won't help

In any case, as a potential buyer I hate hearing about cases like this because the perceptions of thousands and thousands of seller's will be skewed towards holding out indefinitely, even for their mediocre names... and that is bad, because for all the ones that we read about in sales articles, there are 100's of thosands not sold (and will never be sold) beacuse the sellers will continue to wait (in vain) for those rare buyers (wealthy & irresponsible sort) - like these bozos were.

[dtobias]

Actually, the site should properly be under .gov.au, since it's an Australian governmental site, isn't it?

[websitedeveloper]

I also think it's discusting and irresponsible that the government wasted so much of our money (I'm Australian) to purchase such an expensive domain name as it was definitely not necessary.

[Beachie]

I don't see why they would need another name when they own Australia.com

[Laird Mobi]

There maybe a market for crap domains after all! I'm gonna email the Aussie government with my list!!!!

[Garry Anderson]

Cappuccino> its also too generic, and too bureaucratic sounding, and too akward imho

I think TourismAustralia.com sounded quite good - although I believe they would have been better with their Australia.com.

Dan> the site should properly be under .gov.au, since it's an Australian governmental site, isn't it?

Our UK government are using domains other than .gov.uk - seems they are ashamed of themselves ;-)

Mind you - I think deceiver Blair should go about with a brown paper bag over his head.

clicknow.to> I also think it's discusting and irresponsible that the government wasted so much of our money (I'm Australian) to purchase such an expensive domain name as it was definitely not necessary.

ClickNow, an Aussie that moved to France - I agree - their Australia.com was better.

Beachie> I don't see why they would need another name when they own Australia.com.

I do not think anybody would disagree Beachie.

[websitedeveloper]

the closer I look into the purchase the more ridiculous 200K is for the government to spend on a domain name, especially because they already make extensive use of subdomains under australia.com such as media.australia.com and tradeevents.australia.com so why do you think they didn't just use tourism.australia.com, thus saving taxpayers 200K?

BTW, I live in Germany now, just didn't update my profile until today.

[Garry Anderson]

CN.to> so why do you think they didn't just use tourism.australia.com

ClickNow.to - I think a lot of public will miss the "." between tourism and australia or replace it with a dash.

I think australia.com is one of the best domains they could use - which they had - so why pussy about with anything else?

BTW, have you got ants in your pants, sit still will you?

[Bionic]

They wanted tourismAustralia.com obviously its a long term investment
with TV advertising planned, you can't pronounce tourism dot australia dot com
easily on TV.

If they paid $20K for it we'd all say welcome to the market, good price, of course
a government has a billion dollar budget, sack an alderman for a year and get the
only domain that might work. 50 extra tourists and its paid off. Australia relies
on tourism, since the success of Paul Hogan revitalising Australia's economy there
are follow ups, the government paid Elle McPhereson $1,000,000 for some commercials, should they have settled for Mimi?

[jberryhill]

"Its maddness! Barcelona.com was 'taken' away!????"

The WIPO decision was reversed in court.

[websitedeveloper]

Good points!