Hotels.com, Hotels.ng and the value of country codes

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I read today about the Nigerian startup Hotels.ng and my first thought was why Hotels.com didn’t already own the Nigerian country code.

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After all, Hotels.com owns country codes for France and Italy and Japan, among others.

But was apparently late to registering country codes for Germany and Netherlands — as well as Nigeria (Africa’s most populous country).

Now, in Hotels.com’s defense, its global brand is “com.” And its global gateway strategy is intended to reinforce this fact; country codes are used as redirects only.

I should also note that Hotels.com finished in the top 10 in this year’s Web Globalization Report Card.

Nevertheless, I’m not convinced that .com is the best global strategy — particularly in emerging markets, where country codes are strong indicators of local companies.

For large multinationals, ccTLDs are trivial expenses, even if you have no short-term plans for using them. Speaking of, the ccTLD for Hotels.bw (Botswana) is for sale for roughly $2,000.

Which leads me to wonder who is going to register the new generic top-level domain .hotels.

This seems like a natural fit for Hotels.com, and yet Booking.com has applied for it (although the application status is on hold).

PS: I recently completed a book (review coming) that talks about the threat that emerging market companies post to established multinationals. I wonder if this is one such future case study.

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John Yunker

John Yunker

John is co-founder of Byte Level Research and author of Think Outside the Country as well as 19 editions of The Web Globalization Report Card.
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