Another record breaking domain purchase for cruise.co.uk

Online cruise travel agent, cruise.co.uk is used to making big statements about its cruise business and the purchase of cruises.co for over $80,000 this month heralds a new venture for the business in 2013. The cost, whilst nowhere near as much as the $1m paid for the “s” in cruises.co.uk four years ago by the company, is still the highest amount paid for any new .co domain, released just two years ago – showing the increasing importance of second level domains to companies looking to maximize the brand online.

Cruises.co will sit firmly in a portfolio of domain names, including cruise.co.uk, cruises.co.uk and rivercruises.co.uk, as well as cruise.co which was purchased two years ago. This latest purchase comes just four years after Carnival Corporation sold Cruise.co.uk back to Andrew Gardner and Seamus Conlon, and coincided with the company paying the highest recorded UK price for a domain with the acquisition of cruises.co.uk for £560,000.

Compared to the next highest recorded prices for UK based .co.uk domains:

Recycle.co.uk - £150,000

Ink.co.uk - £130,425

Mobile.co.uk - £120,000

Taste.co.uk - £110,000

Commenting on this latest addition, Seamus Conlon, Managing Director of Cruise.co.uk said, “People may have thought that we were crazy in spending so much money on the purchase of cruises.co.uk but it has certainly paid for itself as it is now the largest cruise community in the UK.

“As the Internet develops further, it’s becoming more and more important to have the right URLs and that’s why we have invested in cruises.co. We also wanted a non-country specific URL for our future development plans. We need to make sure that we have control of this URL to ensure consistency across our brand and maintain our number one rating on Google across the various sites.”