TodayISP.com, an ICANN-accredited domain name registrar, announced that it has begun registration for travel and tourism companies that would like to adopt a dot travel (.travel) domains.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved the .travel TLD (Top Level Domain) name in April 2005, as part of a plan proposed by the Tralliance Corporation to create a comprehensive online community that caters exclusively to companies in the travel and tourism industry.

"In 2005, Forrester Research expects 32.1 million U.S. households to use the Web to buy leisure trips for which they'll spend $63.6 billion, making travel-related services the single largest category in online commerce," Barrett said in a statement.

.Travel domain was created for consumers as an integrated and highly specialized worldwide e-directory. It was designed to help identify and distinguish between various businesses that provide travel-related services. Businesses that are eligible for a .travel domain names include hotels and resorts, travel agents, tour operators, theme parks, camp facility operators, air-, cruise- and rail-lines, visitor's bureaus and others, according to the ness release.

"To verify eligibility for .travel, companies must first become authenticated," said Barrett. "There are two ways to do this: The company can belong to one of 30 travel associations that are providing the service, or they can go through Dun & Brandstreet." 

Once authenticated, TodayISP.com can apply to register .travel domain name through its Web site.