Word out of Lorain County OH is that officials there failed to renew the URL for their DMO...and it now directs visitors to a gaming website in Indonesia. Amid the finger pointing going on, one County official said that the lost URL is a moot point because they want all their websites to be .gov, because that's the way the public knows that a site is a legitimate government website.
Excuse me? A legitimate government website is the last place I'd go for travel inspiration and information.
But, here's the learning moment (which we've touched on several times before). When a DMO (or really, any enterprise) decides to move on from one URL to a better URL, you must keep renewing (and owning) the old URL...forever. Every destination has visitors that have learned or love a past URL (we were fans of the no longer used nawlins.com). But, New Orleans & Company was smart enough to know that, while the old URL didn't produce the traffic they had expected, they needed to retain the URL and have it redirect to neworleans.com. Once you acquire a URL...you hafta continue to own it til the day you die...or face the consequence of having it snatched up by someone else.
What happened to Lorain County isn't the worst we've seen. That would be DMOs that have dropped old URLs only to have them picked up by porn sites. But honestly, walking away from a URL is never a good idea...even if you know you'll never use it again.
Do you know the renewal date for yours?
Point right on target Bill. I once worked for an organization that changed our URL to be a much better reflection of who we were. Unfortunately, the renewal for the old URL got sent to another agency and then down the rabbit hole. I never saw it or thought about it. Imagine my chagrin when I went to a board meeting early one day only to have board members looking at a Mexican porn site! It took over a year and a lot of cash to capture it back. What a nightmare so please everyone, don't make the mistake that I had to live through. Listen to Bill Geist and you will be better off.
Posted by: David Hinderliter | April 08, 2021 at 14:49
Sorry to hear that it happened to you, brother. It happens more than any of us want to admit.
Posted by: Bill Geist | April 08, 2021 at 14:52
This isn't a screw up by a pro running a DMO. It is an outcome of the county dismantling their DMO some years back out of greed/power and not knowing how to run one in the first place.
Posted by: LT | April 08, 2021 at 15:31