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The million dollar 's' bought for UK domain name
UK domain record shattered as cruises.co.uk sails to £560,000 ($1m) the price paid for adding an 's' to the domain name,
The purchase by www.CRUISE.co.uk of the plural version of its eponymous website from German travel company Nees Reisen, shatters the previous record for a .co.uk domain name set in October 2007 when venture capital firm ASAP Ventures acquired the domain recycle.co.uk for £150,000.
The website has 18,000 active contributors to the site. The company announced that www.CRUISES.co.uk would become its new site for online social networking, used to create a cruise community with user-generated content to meet the demands of this expanding sector.
According to the Passenger Shipping Association, the number of Britons taking a cruise grew by 11% to 1.35 million in 2007, with the number of first-time cruisers increasing significantly.
Seamus Conlon (pictured), MD of www.CRUISE.co.uk, said: “The cruise market is one of the fastest and most consistently growing sectors in the travel industry – a trend predicted to continue – and our website, www.CRUISE.co.uk, is the market leader.
“This year we are launching a number of initiatives – of which this is the second – to cement that position and to increase user-generated content.
“‘Cruises’ is consistently ranked first on Google, with ‘cruise’ just behind. We wanted the top positions so that when internet users are searching for cruise deals, reviews or news we are the first port of call.
“People may not have friends or colleagues who have cruised, so they don’t have a reference point – someone who can give their personal recommendation. This is why several real and, most importantly, unedited past passenger cruise reviews are so important in the decision making process of potential cruisers, both regular and new.”
In its first campaign, launched earlier this month, the company purchased 10,000 copies of the £16.99 Berlitz Cruise Guide and is giving them away absolutely free, inclusive of postage and packing, to anyone posting a cruise review on its website. The site has received over 2000 reviews since this campaign was launched.
Top five highest prices for .co.uk domain names
cruises.co.uk, £560,000 – purchased January 2008, by www.cruise.co.uk
recycle.co.uk, £150,000 – purchased October 2007
ink.co.uk, £130,425 – purchased 2007
mobile.co.uk, £120,000 – purchased 2007
taste.co.uk, £110,000 – purchased 1997
World’s most expensive domain names (USD)
sex.com, $12 million – purchased 2005
porn.com, $9.5 million – purchased 2007
business.com, $7.5 million – purchased 1999
diamond.com, $7.5 million – purchased 2006
beer.com, $7 million – purchased 1999
www.CRUISE.co.uk and www.CRUISES.co.uk
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Does´nt it make you think that you wish that you thought of the idea. www.cruises.co.uk is such a generic term and these are going to sell for much more money and in an industry where they have to fill up the ships it sounds like a sound investment - been to site - pretty interesting...
left by: SImon on Fri 08 Feb 2008
Rating: 3 / 5
What´s the point of this sale? Who cares whether they have www.cruise.co.uk as well as www.cruises.co.uk? It might give better rankings but people have minds of their own, and surely are more likely to book cruises with well known brands like P&O???
The purchase by 
