Travelzoo purchased the domain name Fly.com™ in an all cash deal in late January 2009 for $1.76 Million. The domain name transaction was done using the Sedo.com domain brokerage service. By February 2009 the Fly.com site was live in the US and by August in the UK.
Fly.com is an "Airfare search engine" that uses real time tracking of all the major airlines fairs for the best deals.
Over the weekend I was watching a little TV and I saw several commercials promoting the Fly.com website. The ads feature "fingers" with little faces on them (kind of creepy really) and reference to visit Fly.com the next time you plan to fly. As with many great generic domain names, the domain name was very powerful and simply makes sense with what they offer. Although it seems so simple and the domain name makes so much sense, it took Travelzoo $1.76 Million reason to easily make that much sense to its customers! Providing an easy to remember and make sense domain name is vital to many companies to help their ads "stick" and improve conversion rates.
The Fly.com website has a very simple design but is to the point. A tag line states, "Compare hundreds of travel sites with one search".
Using a couple filters on the site with the data of your next travel adventure will result in real time results of the best airfare deals on the web. To top it off, Fly.com is free to use.
So, is Fly.com working for Travelzoo? According to a press release in April 2010, I would say so. Fly.com is reporting a new record, with over 3.5 million searches for airfare on the site in the month of March alone. It is a very good bet that many of these searches result into bookings.
Fly.com is a great domain name, yet only one piece of the puzzle! It helps with advertising and getting a message across while allowing the domain name to be a place anybody can visit at any time but I still think the advertising is needed. Fly.com is a great domain name but putting Fly.com in a related ad just makes it all that more powerful and effective.
Congrats goes out to Travelzoo on putting such a great domain name to work for them, advertising with it and building a make sense brand!
Mike Sullivan
That’s an awesome 3 letter name that actually means something. And the site has a nice clean layout.
Aron - XF.com
Good find.
I wish them success with their Fly.com domain — it sure is a great one!
Aron