New Domain Names with .hotel

The organization that oversees the Internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, plans to start selling the rights to an unlimited number of top-level domains next year, such as .bank, .hotel, .nyc or .verizon.

Worried about having to shell out
millions of dollars to protect their brands, several major companies
are protesting the launch of a slew of new top-level domains — the
suffixes like ".com" that appear at the end of Web-site
names. Verizon Communications, Marriott International and New York
Life Insurance are among the companies arguing that the new domains
could open the flood gates to Internet fraud and drastically increase
their costs of doing business online. The companies also say there
couldn't be a worse time than a down economy to saddle them with the
added expense.
Companies fear that if they don't
register their trademarks at the new domains, their brand names could
be hijacked, leading to mistrust of their brands, as well as Internet
scams.
ICANN says it plans to carefully review
any organization that is applying to operate a new top-level domain.
"No one is saying that there won't be challenges in this, but
there are enormous innovation opportunities as well," says Paul
Levins, the group's executive officer and vice president of corporate
affairs.
Companies are debating whether they
should buy up the rights to operate their own brand-specific domains,
such as .marriott or .nylife. They also are looking at registering
their trademarks for more generic domains. For example, Marriott is
considering acquiring the rights to Marriott.nyc, Marriott.travel or
Marriott.vacations.
The application fee to operate a new
top-level domain is $185,000. Companies that buy the rights to one
would also bear the technical costs of running a registry, as well as
the marketing costs of drawing consumers to the new sites.