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$5 billion e-commerce site to dump .com for dot-brand

Kevin Murphy, May 30, 2017, 13:08:07 (UTC), Domain Registries

The online ticketing arm of the French national railway operator SNCF has revealed plans to migrate away from .com to its dot-brand gTLD, .sncf.
The web site voyages-sncf.com will become oui.sncf in November, the company has confirmed following press reports at the weekend.
The existing site, despite the cumbersome domain, processed €4.3 billion ($4.8 billion) of ticket and other sales in 2015.
That number was reportedly down slightly last year due to the impact of the various terrorist attacks on the continent.
Still, it’s one of France’s most visible online brands, and has been around since 2000. The site is also available in other European languages and via mobile apps.
The new domain, oui.sncf, is already online. It currently redirects to an FAQ about the rebrand, at the .com site
Parent company SNCF is France’s government-owned rail operator, with overall revenue of €32.3 billion ($36 billion).
While ICANN’s new gTLD program produced hundreds of dot-brands, only a handful to date have moved substantially away from their original domains.

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Comments (11)

  1. M. Menius says:
    May 30, 2017 at 1:39 pm

    Incredible news. Dot brand and news gtld’s are gaining traction with every passing week. The right side of the dot is telling the full story, and offering a more complete picture for companies around the world aiming to differentiate themselves.

    Reply
  2. David A says:
    May 30, 2017 at 3:23 pm

    In the future the large and medium size brands of the Web (over 100 staff) will opt for a .brand extension. It provides mail security and gives a web company an air of ability and power that a simple .com can-not. Smaller companies will try to emulate the big boy by purchasing more generic NTLDs as pointers to their existing site which could be a .com or an NTLD as it feels safer to base there. All roads lead to more domain registrations.

    Reply
  3. Jovenet Consulting says:
    May 30, 2017 at 3:45 pm

    The .SNCF new gTLD really rocks and will also highly increase the level of security for its online consumers. They won’t see it but it will be there.

    Reply
    • Acro says:
      May 30, 2017 at 5:05 pm

      I would not say that the particular gTLD “rocks” exactly, but it is what it is.
      Lesser brands getting their own gTLD can be an expensive venture into domain rebranding. It’s not like .Audi, .Canon or .Xerox

      Reply
  4. Glasson says:
    May 30, 2017 at 8:37 pm

    SNCF has done a whole rebranding of it’s high-speed train TGV called now “InOui”. It’s been a laughing stock in France and a total failure from customer’s perspective. Hope a different team will work on .sncf

    Reply
    • Kevin Murphy says:
      May 30, 2017 at 9:10 pm

      Interesting. How is that pronounced? Anything like “ennui”?

      Reply
      • Glasson says:
        May 31, 2017 at 7:12 am

        Sounds more like “in-ui”. SNCF played on the word “inouï” which means incredible, unheard of….but people on social media found funnier puns.

        Reply
  5. Snoopy says:
    May 30, 2017 at 11:28 pm

    Only someone using taxpayer money would be willy enough to try it at this stage of the game. As if voyages-sncf.com wasn’t bad enough?

    Reply
  6. Dot Advice says:
    May 31, 2017 at 12:19 am

    Would be interesting to do a cost benefit analysis to launch .sncf

    Reply
  7. Reality says:
    June 2, 2017 at 4:04 am

    It’s a captive audience and public money, so they can be as wasteful and hare-brained as they like with no consequences.

    Reply

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