Geo hotels names have been quite popular in the past but over the last few years there haven’t been the big sales like those that took place years ago. I saw a sale a couple days ago JapaneseHotels.com which took quite the haircut from the previous time it sold. On Flippa the name went for $999 vs selling for $6,750 on GoDaddy almost 1 year ago.
ThailandHotels.com is on auction at GoDaddy now at $2,650, this is an expiring auction.
They probably chose a bad venue to sell at but still geos have not done well. No longer a clear market for a name like this. Other than another domainer who would be the obvious buyer?
Even the big states/cities have little market unless very tourist focused. Most of the reason is Google’s exact match changes in 2012 that have wiped most of the advantage that these names had.
The Internet is more than Google’s algorithm.
I think “Japanese Hotels” is a poor prefix for a domain, but let’s consider Japan.com. It’s memorable, suitable for word-of-mouth dissemination, and has inherent credibility.
Google can do whatever it wants with its algorithm, and as far as I’m concerned, it wouldn’t affect more than 5% of the value of a top-tier name like Japan.com.
Personally I have had great success in recent years, buying and selling CountryNames.com and CapitalCities.com, without any extra words added on.
When I do register a GEO name with an extra word, the only words I would take are “News” and “Visit”. And those I would only hand-register, not buy second hand.
JapaneseHotels.com is strange geo hotel domain combo. Japanese is a language, Japan is a location. JapanHotels.com or TokyoHotels.com would be true geo hotels URLs. Whoever sold JapaneseHotels.com made a great deal. JapaneseHotels.com is non-sensical as a domain address IMO. I’m surprised it ever sold at all…
Sometimes the name is worth more if you develop it.