.booking
| Status: | delegated |
| Type: | Generic |
| Category: | Commerce |
| Priority #: | 674 - Booking.com |
.booking is a TLD from ICANN's New gTLD Program that was delegated on July, 19, 2016 to Booking.com B.V., based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.[1] The administrator is MarkMonitor and technical support is run by GoDaddy Registry.[2] It is a “single registrant TLD” (Article 4.5 of ICANN's Registry Agreement). This means that all domain name registrations in the .booking TLD are for booking.com's exclusive use and that booking.com cannot sell, distribute or transfer control or use of any of them to any non-affiliate third party.[3]
Application Details
Excerpted from Response to Question 18:
"Booking.com BV, a subsidiary of Priceline.com (Nasdaq:PCLN), is the No.1 online hotel reservations agency in the world, in terms of the number of online hotel room nights sold. Booking.com is dedicated to offering the best rates for all of the accommodation offered, attracting over 30 million unique visitors each month via the Internet from both leisure and business markets worldwide.
Established in 1996, Booking.com BV offers competitive rates for any type of property, ranging from small independent hotels to five-star luxury. The Booking.com website is available in 41 languages and offers more than 168,000 affiliated hotels in 160 countries around the world. ..
At least during the initial months or even years following the delegation of the .booking gTLD to Booking.com, this extension is likely going to be a so-called “single registrant TLD” as contemplated by ICANN in Article 4.5 of the template Registry Operator Agreement (“Transition of Registry upon Termination of Agreement”). For the avoidance of doubt, a “single registrant TLD” is a TLD where “(i) all domain name registrations in the TLD are registered to, and maintained by, Registry Operator for its own exclusive use, and (ii) Registry Operator does not sell, distribute or transfer control or use of any registrations in the TLD to any third party that is not an Affiliate of Registry Operator.”
Therefore, parties who are not Booking.com will not be entitled to register domain names in the .booking gTLD."[4]