Just A Drop Gets Big Boost From New .travel Internet Domain

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. October 14, 2008

FEBRUARY 10, 2005. Just a Drop, the international water-aid charity for the travel industry, expects to double or even triple the amount of good work it carries out throughout the world, thanks to the generosity of .travel.

The new internet domain has committed to donate $1 (US) to the charity for every .travel domain registered. Just a Drop trustees estimate that the new initiative means they can save the lives of thousands more children.

The first donation of $16,162 was presented in New York by Ron Andruff, president of Tralliance Corporation, the .travel Registry responsible for administering the domain, to Fiona Jeffery, Founder and Chairman of Just a Drop.

Unveiled in at World Travel Market 2005 in London, the Tralliance philanthropic initiative has the potential to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in the decades to come and is the largest funding pledge for Just a Drop in its young history.

In addition to the .travel Registry's donation, Tralliance will continue to encourage all entities that hold those names to match the company's contribution. The goal is to provide Just a Drop with $2 (US) per domain name as that amount can provide a child with clean drinking water for ten years.

Current number of .travel registered domains after only 16 weeks almost tops that of all other Sponsored Top Level Domains combined, including those that have been in existence more than five years.

"Clean water is vital to the health of children and the impact it has on a family", said Jeffery. "For example, many children are unable to go to school because they have to help carry water back from the well, which can be several hours walk each day. The alternative is collecting polluted drinking and cooking water closer from a muddy pond closer to home, often shared with livestock. This is the reason why the toll of child deaths are sadly so high.

"We cannot thank Tralliance and .travel enough for their wonderful generosity and goodwill. This will make such a difference to the number of families we can help in the future", she said.

Founded in 1997, Just a Drop is the only global travel and tourism industry charity to give children everywhere the right to man's basic right - life - by providing clean water to thousands of children and their families. A registered charity officially regulated by the British Charity Commission, Just a Drop raises money to build wells, hand pumps and health and sanitation programmes in order to give children and their families access to clean water close to their homes.

"The travel industry as a whole is keenly aware of the importance to 'give back' to the communities in which they operate," said Andruff. "As an integral part of the global travel and tourism community, Tralliance wants to ensure that vital causes like Just a Drop receive the on-going support that they need and deserve."

"The dollars raised through the Tralliance pledge will help to address the needs of more than 1.4 billion people who have no access to a basic right of clean water," said Jeffery. "Travel organisations that join in the .travel initiative will potentially be saving hundreds of thousands of lives of those less fortunate all around the world."

The .travel top level domain formally establishes itself in the mainstream of the World Wide Web following completion of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) mandated limited launch phase. The limited launch period demonstrated that all systems are "go," which enables the fully operational Registry to now accept .travel registrations from the broad spectrum of the global travel and tourism industry. The .travel Registry is now open and the world's travel-related businesses can claim their space on the Internet.

Currently in Beta testing, later this year, Tralliance will unveil the new consumer .travel Directory www.directory.travel as a free service that will prove a useful search tool for consumers and the travel trade seeking information. When initially launched to the consumer, content in the .travel Directory will be presented in nine languages: English, Arabic, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin.

Providing a precise catalog of virtually every product or service offered by .travel registrants, the .travel Directory is an unbiased utility that distributes company, product and service information corresponding to each query, enabling users to expeditiously find exactly what they are looking for.

Unlike other search tools on the Internet, the .travel Directory performs concept or co-related searches - i.e. travelers searching for a hotel in Orlando with a spa, a golf course and certified babysitting services receive only those specific hotels that offer all of those features. The .travel Directory is designed to filter every profile listing in the system through the matrix of user-selected criteria. The more granular the search criteria, the shorter the list of matching providers will be returned. The fact that the user will receive 100% matches to every query will go a long way to removing the frustration of today's online travel planner while enhancing commerce for the entire industry.