The purchase of cruise.co for $81,000 has upped the ante in a spot of domain name one-upmanship in the cruise retail world.
Cruise.co.uk gazumps Adore Cruises in battle of valuable domain deals
The purchase of cruise.co for $81,000 has upped the ante in a spot of domain name one-upmanship in the cruise retail world.
Based on today’s exchange rate, the purchases by cruise.co.uk equates to just £1,300 more than Adore Cruises was reported to have paid for cheapcruises.co.uk earlier this month.
Adore’s owner Ian Gilder then claimed this was the most valuable purchase of a premium domain in the UK this year.
Cruise.co.uk said the purchase of the .co website address underlined the increasing importance of second level domains for brands looking to enhance their digital presence.
The $81,000 bill fell way short of the firm’s $1 million purchase of the ‘s’ in its name, when it bought cruises.co.uk.
According to cruise.co.uk, the purchase is more than double the next valuable deal for a .co website, taoboa.co ($31,500) which significantly exceeded the next, vehicles.co ($18,500).
Cruises.co join cruise.co.uk’s portfolio of domain names, including www.cruise.co.uk, www.cruises.co.uk and www.rivercruises.co.uk, as well as www.cruise.co, which was purchased two years ago.
Seamus Conlon, managing director of Cruise.co.uk, said: “People may have thought that we were crazy in spending so much money on the purchase of www.cruises.co.uk but it has certainly paid for itself as it is now the largest cruise community in the UK.
“As the internet develops further, it’s becoming more and more important to have the right URLs and that’s why we have invested in cruises.co.
“We also wanted a non-country specific URL for our future development plans. We need to make sure that we have control of this URL to ensure consistency across our brand and maintain our number one rating on Google across the various sites.”
