Holiday.com Hitting The Auction Block & “Experts” Predict It To Sell For More Than $30 Million

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According to Dailymail.co.uk, the domain name Holiday.com is going to be auctioned off at the World Travel Market, a conference for the international travel industry at London Excel on November 5.

According to unnamed “experts” the domain is about to “become the priciest domain name in history as it is auctioned for an estimated £20 MILLION”

Of course that is 20 Million British Pounds which equates to over $33 Million dollars at today’s exchange rates.

The story goes on to say the domain is owned by Breathe Luxury Limited and the domain is 16 years old.

According to Estibot the highest sale of any domain with containing the word Holiday was GolfHolidays.com which sold in March, 2011 for either $80,790 or $50,000 (Estibot has the domain selling on Sedo on the same day for two different amounts), golfholidays.co.uk which sold for $36,685 in 2011, holidays.mobi sold for $22,500 in 2008 and beachholiday.com sold for $19,888 in 2007.

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

    • Peter says

      Mike, they don’t deserve any credit.
      BTW – their valuation of HOLIDAY.com is really funny. Jerks!

  4. Maxwell Arnold says

    Totally agreed with these comments. This is hardly an eight-figure domain, in my opinion. In this day and age, that kind of money is much better spent on R&D, and marketing of a BUSINESS, and not just a brand.

    Something that I think some of us may overlook is that the word “holiday” is the European equivalent of “vacation”. As in, “we’re going on holiday next week”. So, I would certainly put a sizeable valuation on this name because of that, but not to the point that it would be in the eight figures.

  5. Michael Castello says

    That’s a fair value. Probably one of the top 200 domain names. The name brings a lot of visuals which makes it more valuable IMO.

  6. Joseph Peterson says

    I wouldn’t be surprised to see Holiday.com sell for a 7-figure USD amount. Less than mid 6 figures would be a disaster. It’s roughly comparable in meaning / potential to Tour.com, Tours.com, Vacation.com, Vacations.com, and Travel.com. And it’s better than some domains that have sold for 7 figures.

    We’ve seen 2-word domains containing holiday-related terms reach 6-figure amounts. For instance:

    ChinaTours.com
    $210k

    CaribbeanVacations.com
    $130k

    Also, Travel.info sold for $110k.

    The value isn’t based on the word’s meaning to Americans (e.g. Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving). But Americans have some of the right associations for the brand name to work as a travel business in the U.S.A. as well. After all, even Madonna had a hit called “Holiday” back in the 80s.

    I agree 100% that $30 million is more than a tad optimistic. Then again, sellers ought to aim high. And it wouldn’t hurt the domain industry to see some of the better domains — and this one IS one of the best — climb into 8 figures. Not saying it will happen. But it wouldn’t hurt.

  7. Robert McIntosh says

    it wont sell judging by the numbers reported and the statements on their homepage

    because if they were fielding offers over the years for anywhere near this amount it would have already been sold

    and what are they going to do, oh ok, we wanted 30 million but if 1 million is your best offer i suppose we’ll take it..providing you by us a beer after signing ok?

  8. Cartoonz says

    I could see someone in that industry put up 8 figures for that domain. Maybe with a lower first number though 😉

    Think about what Travel.com would be worth today. While Vacation.com might seem like a closer match, Travel.com is not as far away as you’d think.

  9. George Kirikos says

    It looks like most people missed the fact that the seller of the domain name is Jay Westerdal (or one of his associated companies). If you Google the telephone number in the WHOIS, that makes it obvious. It’s also the same address and telephone number of Top Level Spectrum Inc., which applied for multiple new gTLDs (i.e. .chat, .contact, .feedback, .pid, .sucks). Jay also applied for a few more via “Fegistry” (i.e. .auto, .forum, .golf, .hotel, .realty, .school). Most of those new gTLDs were/are in contention, and with ICANN auctions coming up, perhaps the proceeds of the holiday.com domain sale are intended to fund new gTLD auctions?

  10. Michael Berkens says

    George

    Maybe

    It interesting that he chose the forum he did to sell the domain at being an industry insider.

    The article points to the sale of Insurance.com but that didn’t happen at auction.