Despite a slew of press releases touting how Holiday.com at $30 Million was the sure bet steal of a lifetime, the domain name apparently failed to sell at the much hyped auction at the World Travel Market.
According to travelmole.com, the domain name Holiday.com, which had a goal of selling for $30 Million, only was able to get a high bid of £4.7 million, which just under the £5 million starting price.
Of course if you know a domain is at auction with a £5 million starting price, you can be the big guy in the room by placing a lower bid just to be the guy who placed a multimillion dollar domain at a price well below starting price.
According to the story, the auction held by Breathe Luxury was due to take place in a theatre at London Excel at 5.30pm on Wednesday.
But on Wednesday morning, the company had to find another venue.
“We only got the new venue at 11am. It was all a bit confusing with times and everything and we had to contact all the bidders who were flying in to tell them about the change
“It wasn’t Breathe Luxury’s decision to move the auction to a venue outside WTM, but did not disclose the reasons why.
“It’s one of those things,” he said. “We got very close to the asking prices for all of the domain names so now we will be contacting all the bidders again.
“We honestly believe that holiday.com is the holy grail in travel, particularly for the UK market.”
Well for those that have done it before holding live/online auctions is not simple.
Its not just sending out a PR or series of PR stating the domain and citing the best possible end user pricing that is going to get it done.
There are a lot of moving parts and its a pretty expensive to do it the right way.
Not locking down a venue well in advance is pretty hard to comprehend.
If your looking to move some premium inventory we at RightoftheDot.com are holding a premium domain name auction at Namescon, at the venue site on January 13th and we will have online bidding available as well.
We are not promising any $30 Million dollar domain sales but we are looking for a good sell through rate and a fun event that attendees will look forward to attending for years to come.
If you have any domains that have a reasonable reserve we will consider them.
Please send any submissions to info@rightofthedot.com
just $30 mil?? dam, i lost the opportunity of a lifetime
“MD Farad Laforce blamed a last-minute change of venue for the failure. ”
IMHO it’s hard to understand why they were not able to secure (and lock down) the venue … weird, isn’t it?
Smells like an excuse for not having been able to reach their much touted and trumpeted 30 mln $ goal … a valuation which IMHO is frankly too high even for such a high quality name.
Just my view though.
No it’s not an excuse!!! We did lock down WTM venue, everything was fine till Wednesday morning. Wish I could tell the world what really happened but that is not our nature and I am personally upset about the event.
“We did lock down WTM venue”
Since you were forced to leave that location, it means that it was not locked down or that it was not secured properly, to say the least … or maybe we have different ideas about what “securing”/”locking down” a location means … lol 😀
“Wish I could tell the world what really happened but that is not our nature”
I think you should clarify … lol@ “is not our nature” …
OK, they know how to “lock down” the venue… they just can’t “hold” the venue. And that’s the most important part, the “holding”.
Seinfeld says it best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSZYsyrP3Co
Cheers,
Scott
Yeah, nice one, hold it and don’t let it run away! LOL! 😀
@Scott – that was very funny (and appropriate). 🙂
If the bids are legitimate, the auctioneer could simply lend the bidder a tiny amount, to hit the reserve. e.g. lend the £4.7 million bidder £0.3 million, in order to trigger a commission for the broker which presumably far exceeds the amount of the “loan” (essentially, the broker cuts his commission to make a win-win-win deal happen amongst buyer, seller and broker).
That could definitely be a viable solution, though it would be interesting to know if the £4.7 mln offer is already “leveraged”, i.e. partially or totally financed by someone else.
Sure, you can add more leverage, but at that point you have to check if it still makes sense investment-wise.
…I dunno what’s so shocking about not making the sale, considering there is a slew of new extension names that can be acquired that makes more sense and fits the name much better than a dot com can.
If they have 30 million bucks they can buy a really significant name and the extension for a literal fraction of the price and with the rest of the money produce a rather healthy marketing campaign.
This, folks, is the reality of the new gTLDs that have been coming out. They do NOT need a dot com with extensions like supplies, market, toys, vacations(premium donut domain $944.00!)
Get real, 30 million or under $1,000, and vacations fits like a glove!…Marketing here is the key and dot com can’t even come close to this no brainer…
Ok I don’t understand how you can have an event at a location without locking down the location
What I find baffling is the total absence of subsequent explanation or announcement by Breathe Luxury. They promoted the auction worldwide (I was watching auction live from Australia); and then once it was done; nothing. I would have thought they’d have some sort of PR announcement out trying to ameliorate or “spin” the situation? (I just checked their website before I posted this to make sure I hadn’t missed anything).
Ned,
Where did they move the location?
They said they had to find another venue, but they didn’t mention where the new location is situated … 🙂
On a boat apparently Andrea!
There was a YouTube video of the auction (which I bookmarked), but that is now “private” and can’t be viewed.
Hope it’s not the Titanic … lol 😀
Weird stuff indeed …
Oh dear. Absolutely shocking. Not.
How about other domains/auctions? Did any of them sell..?
Certainly not on the day. Given their “prior propensity for PR”, I’m sure the world would have heard if they had sold anything!
Did any of the domains sell?
$30 million for any dot com is indeed living in the glory years of the past – never to be seen every again.
David De Jongh Weill @ With true respect. “$30 million for any dot com”: Logic dictates that today’s decisions are far from the “glory years of the past” and that over $30 million for a two letter brand .com makes perfect business sense.(hanzi)
I think it speaks volumes that the domain stayed just below the reserve price of $5m. If you had serious bidders involved who were placing bids of $4.7million, stretching that extra £300k at this level of negotiation to secure the name would be chump change. Whilst watching the live auctions, If i didn’t know better i would say there was a serious amount of Shill Bidding going on as nearly ALL the domains sat just below their reserves “how convenient”.
I was really hoping to have placed a couple of my premium travel names in the auction , however, i missed the deadline, grr. Did any sales actually materialize in the end?
It might be that this was a sign of “chandelier bidding” (do a Google search on the term), which is apparently legal in the UK. If someone was physically in the room, though, they could determine who made the bids, whether it was an actual bidder, or just the auctioneer creating drama. If the YouTube video was restored to public view, that might help ascertain what happened (if the camera featured a view of the audience).
Well the article said the starting price was £5 million which would be the smallest allowed bid which maybe or may not be the reserved price.
I have seen auctions where there is a minimum bidding price and a different reserve price
Mike,
It clearly states “Starting Bid $5,000,000 No Reserve Auction” for Holiday.com on Breathe Luxury website.
So basically 5 mln $ is also the implicit reserve price.
The weird thing is that then it makes no sense when they said the highest bid they received was £4.7 mln, which is approx $7.5 mln, well in excess of the starting bid/reserve price …
On Breathe Luxury website all auctioned domains prices are in USD, not GBP (£).
So did they get a 4.7 mln $ or a 4.7 mln £ offer for it? or what?
Just a widespread currency typo or something else more fishy? 🙂
Anyway, as Frank Schilling said once (I think on DomainSherpa if I remember correctly), auctions are NOT the best way to divest premium domains, and I totally agree.
IMHO it’s way better giving a long term exclusive to a reliable broker, who will be able to negotiate privately with end users, maximizing your proceeds and avoiding to leave money on the table.
The starting bid of $US5 million didn’t happen. Here is the bidding history (how many of these were genuine bids I do not know):
Bidders: 2
Bids: 23
Closed
Bidder Amount Time
Floor USD $4,700,000.00 2d 20h 20m
Bidder # 5038 USD $4,600,000.00 2d 20h 20m
Floor USD $4,500,000.00 2d 20h 20m
Bidder # 5038 USD $4,400,000.00 2d 20h 20m
Floor USD $4,300,000.00 2d 20h 20m
Floor USD $4,200,000.00 2d 20h 20m
Floor USD $4,100,000.00 2d 20h 20m
Floor USD $4,000,000.00 2d 20h 20m
Floor USD $3,900,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $3,800,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $3,700,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $3,600,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $3,500,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $3,400,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $3,300,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $3,200,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $3,100,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $3,000,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $2,900,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $2,800,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $2,700,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $2,600,000.00 2d 20h 21m
Floor USD $2,500,000.00 2d 20h 21m
*This bid was automatically generated on behalf of a bidder who had previously placed a maximum bid
Only 2 bidders? LOL! 😀
Ned, how much time did the entire auction for this domain last?
I don’t know if there were only two bidders. According to the pre-auction blurb, bids could be lodged a few days prior (as from the Monday).
The one identified bidder was Bidder # 5038, and in the original bidding history this buyer was identified as Bidder # 5038 (Cyprus).
Being kind, the second bidder could be the auctioneer bidding on behalf of the earlybird bids.
There again, I could be unkind, but I won’t go there yet.
I think Breathe Luxury should clarify exactly what went down; and what’s going to be happening moving forward.
A Namepros thread hints that some of the geo .tv domains in that auction got decent bids / sales.
https://www.namepros.com/threads/some-great-geo-tv-being-auctioned-at-world-travel-market.836887/
Unconfirmed as yet.
Names very unlikely to sell at the prices being asked. I don’t expect anything to come of it except a statemen to the effect of how they have invested in .TV since 2000 and it’s the 2nd best … blah blah blah