How much is cruising.co.uk worth? [Domain name]

Quoting TTG magazine, domain name cruising.co.uk has gone up for sale to the highest bidder. The sale is being arranged by TravelTek - a Scotland based travel technology company - on behalf of a client.

It is an interesting problem giving a value to a domain name. Earlier this year cruises.co.uk was sold for £560,000 (1.1 million USD) to the existing owner of cruise.co.uk [Source: Telegraph]

Quoting the Telegraph at the time:

Sponsored advertising on Google costs a company an average of 50p a click (1 USD). Last year, 2.4m users searched the word ‘cruises’ on Google.

Seamus Conlon, managing director of Cruise.co.uk said: “The cruise market is one of the fastest and most consistently growing sectors in the travel industry.

“Cruises is consistently ranked first on Google, with ‘cruise’ just behind. We wanted the top positions so that when internet users are searching for cruise deals, reviews or news we are the first port of call.” 

OK. Seems logical enough. But how can this help us value cruising.co.uk?

Kenny Picken, from TravelTek (quoted in TTG) said

The significant thing is that any domain name which is that old, generally speaking, has a greater value because it is established. Anything pre-2000 has a greater integrity on the web. The site has a good pedigree

It might only reach £25,000 (50,000 USD) - it’s a difficult time to sell anything

I turned to Mark Hodson from Travel SEO (a UK company specialising in SEO for travel companies and tour operators) for some further analysis:

Although the domain was registered back in June 1998, Google didn’t index it until 2001 and it wasn’t populated with content until 2004.

Yes, it’s true that older domains tend to carry more authority with search engines, although I’m not aware of any pre-2000 cut off. Also the domain will have more value if it has been consistently attached to a site with great content, rather than just parked with a “for sale” sign.

The real value of the domain lies in the simple fact that it’s an exact match for a very popular and lucrative search term. About 110,000 people Google the word [cruising] every month. Now, if your site is called cruising.co.uk, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be returned high up on the first page of results, if not in the No1 slot. So I would say that a price of £25,000 looks like an absolute steal.

Right…..  which is why it is no surprise that TravelTek are interested in buying the domain name themselves……. and have already put in an offer (!)

I am not sure then whether TravelTek are therefore trying to “talk the price up” (because they want to sell on behalf of their client) or talk the price down (because they fancy buying the name themselves). Not sure that this is a very clever position to be in, from their perspective.

Anyway, what probably counts as one of the the biggest missed opportunities in travel…… the domain was last on the market in 2004 at the great price of £1950 ($4000 USD) [Source: Archive.org].

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